


all we are now (all we've ever been)

by neroh



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universe - The Leftovers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 16:09:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neroh/pseuds/neroh
Summary: More than a decade since the Sudden Departure, Jim Kirk finds himself faced with his past and his carefully planned future ripping at the seams.





	all we are now (all we've ever been)

**Author's Note:**

> To Mel, who is the fucking worst.

Every autumn morning is the same in this place: a chill in just after dawn while the fog lingers overhead, waiting to be lifted by the wind.

The same wind that brings it back come dusk, welcoming the small town into the night like an old lover. Some days are cool and remind him of a place he used to call home. Others are warm, muggy even, as the sweetness of precipitation fills the air and one’s lungs. The tang of rain threatens to break from the clouds containing its wrath; sometimes it does and others it does not.

On those days, his hair is a profusion of soft waves threaded with white where his age has begun to show. He wonders if his father, had he been here long enough to witness more of his descent into his golden years, would look the same or if this is a gift from his mother.

People always told him that he was the spitting image of his father; doppelgänger, twin stranger, mirror images. Bad omens as folklore dictate, harbingers of ill luck and of death. A paranormal phenomenon that Cornish and Norman French lore states were Ankou, a personification of death. Percy Shelley, the husband of Mary, met his own in the weeks leading up to his demise while poet John Donne encountered his wife’s on the night she died in childbirth.

Strange tales with even stranger ends; perhaps he was always meant to be the red herring in the events that would shake apart the world he lives in. Not a squalling baby covered in membrane just like everyone else, but the pox of humanity.

It doesn’t matter now. The world survived the Sudden Departure and forged on, chaos reigning supreme for several years before it too disappeared.

Everything is different, yet the same.

He still eats his breakfast that consists of a single cup of coffee with eggs and toast at the kitchen table in front of the bay window. He showers afterward and dresses in the silence of his bedroom. His clothing consists of iterations within the contents of his closet, everything hung neatly on plastic hangers while waiting to be used. His shoes—sandals, sneakers, penny loafers, and a worn pair of boots—sit below them in a straight line with the laces tucked inside.

In a previous life, he was never this neat or simple— _uncomplicated_ is probably a better word for it—before coming here. Before he was messy, reckless, volatile; forever trying to push his boundaries as well as the boundaries of others.

He was like an explosion.

Experience and loss have tamed his wild streak, giving birth to a quiet man who survives on odd jobs and goes to church if he can drag himself out of bed on Sundays. His face has lost most of its youthful allure, bringing crow’s feet and a frown line at the root of his nose. He notices little things about himself, things he doesn’t recall when he was younger—thinner lips, darker hair where it hasn’t gone white, skin weathered and worn.

At forty-seven years old, he shows the signs of a life still being lived. _You’re something special,_ one person told him long ago. _You can change the world._

Back then he didn’t want the burden of that responsibility and ran so far away until he couldn’t feel its weight on his shoulders. While he has nothing, he still has his eyesight, hair, and kept fat from his belly. It’s the little things that matter now since everything else has been left behind.

So, he goes about shooing the doves into their cages and fastening them on the back of his bicycle. Plucking the ropes with his fingers, he examines the strength of the knots as another one of the birds lands on the coop. Its snow-colored feathers gleam in the sunlight breaking through the clouds, cooing as it walks over the threaded wire.

“You’re late,” he says to the dove, chuckling when it replies with a defiant sound. He goes to the bird, who carries on without fear of a human being in its sphere, and notices a rolled-up piece of paper fastened to its leg with loose twine.

He reaches out, tugging on it, and watches it uncoil until the paper floats to the ground. The dove pays no mind as it calls out to its bevy, who respond in kind. He picks up the note and tucks it into his pocket before scooping up the dove with gentle hands. The bird is warm and soft against his skin, so light he could be holding air.

“Come on,” he tells the animal, “let’s get you with your brothers and sisters.”

Once the dove is inside a cage, he wheels the bicycle to the gate and hops on. The roads in the more rural part of Eltham are mostly dirt or mud if there’s been rain and bumpy on the better parts. He coasts down to the main drag with the coos of doves in his ears and begins pedaling once the land has flattened out.

It’s lush and green out here, no different from the town he grew up in. The trees begin changing their leaves, turning into a mosaic of reds, yellows, and burnt oranges painting the landscape. Snow does not touch this place, though the same cannot be said for Mount Taranaki, whose peaks are covered with it during the colder months.

He passes by farmers on tractors or herding their livestock on horseback with a cattle dog on their heels. The scent of their manure wafts wherever the breeze takes it and if he closes his eyes, there are moments when he thinks he’s home and this all but a very strange dream.

It’s not; it never is. Even at night, he finds himself back in old memories where his ear is pressed into the warmth and muscle of another man’s chest, listening to his beating heart in a cage made from skin and bone. Where the rumble of laughter vibrates through his body and sparse hair tickles his cheek. Where knowing that a pair of hazel eyes watches him as fingers lazily stroke the knobs down his spine.

Where he doesn’t wake up alone and wanting and listening to the old house creaking throughout the night.

It’s a life that was never meant to be his and he’s made peace with this fact. In the distance, he sees the crude church steeple, covered in water spots and weathered with age. There are times he wonders if the next storm will result in the death of the structure and yet, every time he’s proven wrong.

He finds the nun tending to the vegetable garden, wearing a light blue cardigan over her habit and orthopedic shoes smudged with dirt.

She hears him coming, he’s making a racket after all, and stands while she shucks off her ratty gloves. The nun is an attractive woman with green and blue eyes—heterochromia, he remembers from a long forgotten source—and blonde hair. The type of woman that could have the world fall at her feet and yet, she’s here. He wonders what made her take her vows and pursue a religious life; he could probably ask her, but he doesn’t go out of his way to make friends.

More importantly, he doesn’t know her name; he’s never bothered to ask.

“You’re here,” she says cheerfully, her accent shortening the Es as it does to everyone in this town. “I was wondering if you’d come.”

He gives her a skeptical look as he swings a leg over the bike and kicks down the stand. He tends to the doves without a word, unknotting the ropes and carrying cages over two-by-two, placing them at the bottom step near the side door. The birds coo amongst themselves, huddling together as they take in their new surroundings. He envies them in that way; they always have each other while he only has himself.

It was his choice and he can’t blame anyone.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” the nun comments. She follows him with her eyes, offering a friendly smile when he looks at her. “I suspect you’ll have a pleasant ride back.”

He shrugs. “If it doesn’t rain,” he says as he brings over the last two cages. Glancing up at the sky reveals dark clouds towards the western skies, where the Bight lies.

“Ah, if it doesn’t,” the nun agrees. She reaches into one of her pockets, producing a wad of cash held together with a blue rubber band. “I put in some extra,” she tells him. “For your trouble.”

He nods and pockets the money. “Thanks.” He grabs the handle of his bicycle as his foot kicks the stand back up and turns it around; the sooner he leaves; the sooner he can finish his errands in town.

“Steve,” she calls, sounding uncertain while he situates himself on seat and fiddles with the gears. “Does the name Leonard mean anything to you?”

He freezes.

As if someone has submerged him in ice water and holds him there until the shock of it wears off. Pain comes, stabbing him directly in the heart where it burns all the way up to his eyes. He blinks, doing away the sting.

Clearing his throat, he shakes his head. “No,” he tells her before he pushes off and sets off towards the horizon.

 

* * *

 

The thing is…well.

Leonard does mean something to him, or at least, it used to. _It did_ , he tells himself. _It still does_ , replies another voice from the recesses of his mind.

 _It always will_ , says another that suspiciously sounds like his uncle, Chris.

Funny how a name can unravel a person just by speaking it aloud. From the moment it left the nun’s lips, a knot formed in his stomach.

A single name that he hasn’t heard, but has thought of entirely too much. An entire decade since he’s last said it—yelled it, even, as its owner left him in a hotel room and drove off. His name echoed into the night as he pled for Leonard to stay, not to leave him alone.

Not to abandon him when he needed him most.

But he did.

All he has is the memory of retreating tail lights glowing in the darkness, growing smaller until they were only specks in the distance, then nothing at all.

He goes as far as the post box before whipping his head around to find the nun watching him. Something about her steely gaze makes him uncomfortable. He wants to tell the truth when she’s around; it pushes at his throat. “You know I’m lying,” he calls out to her.

She shrugs. “I never said that.” She goes to him, still clutching the ratty gloves while her feet crunching on the gravel.

“But you know,” he accuses once she’s close enough. He takes a step back.

“He had a picture with him,” the nun says in that infuriatingly calm tone she always uses. “Of a young man who looked exactly like you and a different name.” She gives him a once-over and raises one of her golden brows in critique. “With less grey hair; seemed a bit friendlier, too.”

He scowls but doesn’t counter the remark. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” she assures. “I have no interest in your secrets, but I will say this; I believe he’s been searching for you for quite some time.”

Swallowing, he grips the handlebars of the bike and feels the burn of skin being pulled too tightly over his knuckles. “How would you know?”

It comes out with a bit too much bite and he should feel bad for snapping at a nun, of all people, but he’s wounded. A piece of his past has come and he’s rattled.

He has half a mind to go home and pack a bag. Leave without a word, become the whispered-about tale of the man with his doves who disappeared one day.

“You might think me naive,” the nun says with a humoring smile. “But I know more than you think I do. I’ve seen the look of a man besotted, desperate even, and one of another man desperate to flee.” She ends this with a pointed stare. “I haven’t decided which you are.”

“What makes you think I’m either?”

A knowing glint lights up her eyes. “Perhaps you’re both,” she counters, winking. “ _James_.”

He flinches as if she’s struck him with her bare hands. “It’s _Steve_ ,” he growls.

The nun smiles knowingly. “I’m sure it is.”

 

* * *

 

His memories of the Sudden Departure ache as if it happened yesterday.

As if Jim Kirk was thirty minutes into his morning run, thinking about how much he _really_ hates Iowa in the fall and has only _just_ remembered said hatred.

People ask all of the time, whispering their question because the subject is still taboo years later. It’s akin to the day Kennedy was assassinated, a balmy day in September when planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Michael Jackson died.

Jim gives them an insignificant answer. “I don’t remember,” he told someone once. The person asking formed an uneasy smile on their face before changing the subject.

So that’s the answer he sticks with and it’s the furthest thing from the truth.

Because he remembers and he wishes he didn’t. Funny how a single event can traumatize a person, turning them from a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care being to a shell because that’s what Jim feels like.

A ghost in a shell, aimlessly wafting through life while others live it.

 

* * *

 

He remembers the small-town hell hole situated on flat, rolling plains filled with corn, that had no idea what temperature it wants to be. How only a day ago, it was nearly eighty degrees and sweltering to the point that moving from the freezer wasn’t an option until his mom made him. Then was forty-fucking-five at ten in the morning with a high of maybe—just _maybe—_  fifty, if they’re lucky.

God, he hated that place and, at the time, he had no idea what compelled him to come back. Cheaper rent (i.e. living in the guest unit above the garage at his parent’s farm)? A quiet space to regroup after completing his master's (fat chance of that happening thanks to Sam and Aurelan’s boys always—ALWAYS—being over)? Familiar surroundings and job opportunities (in the middle of bum fuck Iowa—nope)?

Then Jim remembered the heart-to-heart conversation he had with his father shortly after graduation and realized what a manipulative shit his old man is. _We miss you, Jimmy_ had been the clincher that sent him into a frenzy of packing up his tiny shithole apartment in Boston and back to Riverside, Iowa.

Home of absolutely nothing with a population of seventeen hundred and one and more cows than people and more cornfields than cows.

Being back in the town he grew up in, a town he’s outgrown, chafed at him and he cursed himself to even listening to dear ol’ dad. What he should have done was taken up his uncle Chris’s offer to crash in his guestroom in San Francisco while waiting tables, tending bar, and doing whatever he had to do before landing a job. San Francisco, at the very least, would have been more interesting than here. Jim was bored out of his skull.

So he went running in the mornings before everyone’s awake or over at his parent’s; listening to music on his iPhone (which, at best, gets spotty service) and pounding his feet against the pavement of Highway 22. Because one _can_ go jogging on a highway when they’re in _Iowa_.

It was just him, whatever playlist tickled his fancy, and the sun rising over golden fields. True, fall had been pretty around these parts, but Jim suspected that lighting his hair on fire would be more entertaining than the absolute chaos which greeted him when he got home.

Just thinking about it ignited a flare of anger deep within his belly. Tensing his jaw, Jim picked up the pace of his feet and pushed through the cold morning air. He ran past his old high school and the junkyard he worked at during the summers, the ravine he nearly drove off of, and the river banks where he and his friends used to drink beer.

He ran until his body ached and his clothes were entirely soaked with sweat and he’s walking through the front door of the guest house, where he kicked off his sneakers. Jim peeked out the window, groaning when he spotted Sam’s SUV parked next to his mother’s car in the driveway.

 _So much for a quiet morning_ , he thought as he pulled off his shirt and stripped himself of his dirty clothes, leaving a trail of them as he went into the bathroom.

The water pressure and scalding hot temperature was the only saving grace of being home. Jim turned the knobs and began to brush his teeth at the sink. The bathroom quickly filled with steam, which curled into the air and fogged up the single window and mirror.

As he worked the toothbrush in his mouth, Jim watched his reflection disappear and wondered if it was a metaphor for how he felt—the person he became outside of Iowa vanishing before his very eyes. Jim shook his head, cursing himself for getting all wax poetic just because he was in a bad mood and decided to get into the shower.

It’s when he’s got a washcloth rubbing against his ball sack that Sam, his older brother, decided was the _perfect_ time to barge into the bathroom and scare the shit out of him by yanking the shower curtain back. “Jimmy,” Sam shouted.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Sam!” Jim yelled, dropping the washcloth and grabbing the curtain to cover his body. “What the fuck? Don’t you know how to knock anymore?”

His brother rolled his eyes. “Since I’ve had kids? No,” he deadpanned. “Mom wants to know how you want your eggs.”

“ _You_ ,” Jim growled before taking the deepest breath he can muster or so help him, god, he might punch Sam in the face. “You came in here to see how I want my eggs?”

Sam nodded as if this is the most obvious thing in the world because what is privacy these days? Who had ever heard of such a thing? And knocking? Who even does that? “Yeah. So? How do you want them?”

“Surprise me,” he hissed before disappearing behind the shower curtain.

“Don’t be such an asshole, Jimmy,” Sam told him, sounding eerily like their father as the door slammed shut.

Jim stared at the tiles and gritted his teeth to hold in the scream burning at his throat. With a jerky movement, he grabbed the washcloth and began scrubbing his skin raw. He didn’t care if it stung or that he’ll certainly regret it later; anything to keep him from punching the wall and having to explain to his family that he’s slowly having a nervous breakdown, Jim would have done it.

Gripping and shifting his hand, he closed the faucet, causing the water to stop. Some of the tension in his body bled out with the movement, though frustration still boiled through his veins.

What he needed to do was think of a game plan and fast, before he went crazy or complacent, before submitting himself to live a small town.

Ironic since that’s where he’s hidden away.

He hadn’t wanted that life. He hadn’t wanted to join the police force like his father and Sam or go to the same podunk bar every night after his shift to talk about how he was on the football team and how they won the championship three years in a row.

No, that was Sam and his father while his mother was head cheerleader and captain of the debate team. Jim, on the other hand, had been the token black sheep of the Kirk family since birth. Sports were not his thing, save for his tenure on the long-distance team during all four years of high school; that’s as athletic as he got. He favored science and mathematics, joining the robotics team if he wasn’t spending time in Mrs. Rand’s physics classroom after school.

Jim stepped out of the shower and began patting himself down with a towel. Even his body is different from the men in his family; until the age of twenty-five, he was gangling and awkward with knobby knees, even knobbier elbows, and a metabolism that burned everything he ate. Then, by some divine intervention, Jim began filling out and putting on muscle. He lost the remaining baby fat in his cheeks, watching as it gave way to masculine angles and sharp lines. While he’ll never be the broad-shouldered Sam or even his grandpa, Tiberius, he can’t complain.

Not when he could actually walk into a bar without being stopped and having to pull out his driver’s license for deep scrutiny.

Thank god for small mercies.

Dressed and more or less ready to face his family, Jim ventured to the main house. The moment he opened the porch door, he heard his mother shout, “Shoes!”

Groaning, Jim kicked them off and trudged into the kitchen where Sam was feeding Peter in his high chair while David watched Aurelan cut up his pancakes. George Kirk, the patriarch of the family, read the morning paper with a furrowed brow rather than helping his wife, Winona, with cooking breakfast. Not that she’d let any one of them, especially her husband who only knows how to boil water and burn everything he touched.

However, if one were to ask him to chase down a petty criminal or shoot a target in the heart at the gun range, he could do so with ease.

“Morning, cookie,” his mother said as she leaned back and kissed Jim’s cheek. “Did you have a good run?”

He made an incoherent sound as an affirmative while on his way to the coffee machine. Grabbing a mug, he poured himself a drink. “Did about seven miles,” Jim replied, frowning at the pot. He shook it to hear nothing but air and groaned. “Thank you for getting another round of coffee going, whoever drank the last of it.”

“You’re welcome,” his dad muttered distractedly. He flipped to another page of the newspaper without even looking up.

Jim scowled before going about making another pot. He heard Sam and Aurelan laughing at him, probably finding his bad mood to be hilarious. If he was stuck watching _Yo Gabba Gabba!_ or _The Fresh Beat Band_ , he’d probably laugh at other people’s pain to forget what he’s inflicted on himself.

Then again, if this was his life, he’d probably blow his brains out.

“Seven miles, you say?” his mother commented, raising a golden brow as she took a fork to move bacon from the pan to a plate covered with a paper towel. “Doesn’t that make you tired?”

Jim leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “It helps me clear my head.”

“What could you even be worried about, Jimmy?” Sam asked in a know-it-all tone, just like he's always done. He seemed to think that being in school and interning isn’t really work, that a Ph.D. was a waste of money and time. “You’re not working…”

“If there wasn’t a kitchen table and a child between us, I’d give _you_ something to worry about, Sammy,” Jim hissed.

Their mother turned around, pointing the fork at him. “George Samuel Kirk,” she snapped, “leave your brother alone!”

“Huh?” their father said, looking up from the paper.

Jim sighed. “Not you, dad.”

“Oh,” George Kirk replied with a shrug and returned to his paper, unaware of the glare his wife was shooting at their oldest child.

Winona wagged at the fork at Sam, still frowning. “Jimmy worked very hard on his degree, Samuel, and you should cut him a little slack.”

“Slack? He’s living here rent free!”

“I _help_ around the farm, unlike someone I know,” Jim fired back as the coffee pot beeped and stopped churning. He grabbed the handle and poured it into his empty mug.

His older brother scowled at him. “Because I have a _job_ , unlike someone _I_ know.”

Of course, he would go there because Sam, if anything, played dirty. He went for the jugular or prodded and prodded until the other person—usually Jim—exploded in a rage. Then the comparisons from their parents of how _Samuel_ never lost his temper, how _Samuel_ was agreeable and hard-working, how _Samuel_ was so very unlike Jim and that the youngest Kirk is most likely adopted began.

“My apologies, _officer_ ,” Jim hissed, taking a step forward and not realizing that one of David’s Lego blocks was right under his foot.

How a colorful piece of plastic can cause so much pain was beyond him. The knobs dug into the tender skin, sending multiple pulses of downright agony up his entire leg and to the rest of his body. His coffee mug slipped from his hand and loudly shattered on the hardwood floor, sending shards of porcelain drenched in hot black liquid all over Jim.

“Fuck!” Jim yelled, hopping on one foot as he tore the toy from the other. He slammed it down on the counter as his emotions broke and suddenly he was a loose cannon. “Sam, how hard is it for your kids to put their fucking Legos away?”

Sam stared at him, surprised by the outburst while David went pale and wide-eyed at being yelled at, especially by his fun-loving uncle. He blinked at Jim before turning into his mother and wailing.

“It was an accident, Jim,” Winona said quietly.

“An accident?” he snapped, gesturing at his coffee-stained jeans, the mess around him, and his throbbing foot. “You call _this_ an accident? It’s a fucking disaster, mom!”

Cue his brother chiming in. “Hey, don’t talk to mom that way,” Sam shouted over the wailing of two children.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Sam?” Jim yelled back, lunging forward only to be stopped by their father. As he’s being dragged into the hallway, he managed to add, “No one asked for your opinion!”

The world tilted on its axis as George pushed Jim into the wall, pinning him there with hands on his shoulders. His eyes, the same blue color as Jim’s, flashed in anger as he stared at his son. “James,” he said in a tone which brought Jim back to childhood.

“This house isn’t a just another place for him to dump his kids’ shit,” Jim retorted, trying to lift himself off the wall.

George pushed him back. “And it’s not another place for your shitty attitude,” he replied. Underneath the calm in his voice was the beginnings of his temper starting to rise. If anything, George Kirk wasn’t a yeller, unlike his youngest son. He got this tone, the one where both Sam and Jim knew they were about to be in deep shit if they didn’t knock it off. Very rarely did he raise his voice and when he did, there was always a reason.

“But Dad—” Jim whined.

“I don’t want to hear it, James!” George growled and Jim’s mouth clicked shut. “Do you understand me? We’re not here to cater to your mood swings.”

He looked down at his feet and nodded.

“Good,” his father said, taking a step back. The pressure of his hands on Jim’s shoulders lightened and disappeared entirely. “Get yourself together and come back in when you’re ready.”

“Yeah Jimmy,” Sam shouted from the kitchen. “Come back when you’re ready!”

Jim craned his head around the corner and flipped him off. “Fuck you, Sam!”

“Language, James!” their mother admonished.

George looked at his oldest child and frowned, disappointed. “Samuel, knock it off.” He turned back to Jim who decided to go wipe off his jeans in the downstairs bathroom. “I don’t know what you want from us, kiddo.”

“You and me both,” he grumbled over his shoulder and slammed the door, where he faced his reflection in the mirror. Standing before him was a man with dirty blond hair and bright blue eyes that one of his college friends said were like the deep end of the ocean.

Granted, they had been drinking heavily throughout the day and that friend loved to get philosophical and metaphoric on everything. He had laughed it off and ignored it then. Jim approached the sink when he realized that this bathroom hadn’t been restocked with clean hand towels. “Dammit,” he groaned, palming his face in exasperation. He turned around and stepped out into the hallway. “Mom, where do you keep the towels? The downstairs bathroom’s out.”

His echo was met by silence and the white noise of the house. Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, the floor creaking sounded louder than it should. “Mom!” Jim shouted again, hearing his voice travel down the hallway and disappear into the ether.

More silence.

Jim took a few steps forward, craning his head to catch a glimpse of someone. “Hello?” he called, moving to the kitchen. As he came closer, he heard the sizzling of bacon in the pan and not much else. Jim walked through the threshold and found the room empty.

He blinked, opening his eyes to find the same image in front of him. Everything was in the last place they were left in, including the bacon that was starting to burn. Jim rushed to it, removing it from the burner and shutting off the stove. He dumped the pan into the sink, watching as smoke lifted from the surface and to fill the kitchen. Leaning over, Jim cranked open the window, letting fresh air inside.

Turning back to his surroundings, Jim found plates sitting half eaten with cups half filled, mouth prints etched into the surface as if someone has taken a drink from them and left. Silverware gleamed on the floor where it’s been dropped, and a jar of baby food on the high chair.

“Hello?” he called again, scratching his head. “Mom? Dad?” Jim pressed his face against the window screen to see if his family has gone to the porch.

Nothing.

Jim pushed back against the corner, confused until the sharp pain of porcelain cutting into his heel jarred him. A howl of pain pushed out his throat, only to be cut off by his body tripping over his own feet and landing hard on the floor. Oxygen rushed from his lungs, burning and aching as Jim laid there, wheezing.

He tried to moan, only to choke on the sound and curse his life thus far. Pushing himself up, Jim inspected his heel where blood had begun to pebble from a cut. He plucked out the piece of porcelain, flicking it away when he realized that no one, not a single person in this house, had come to check on him.

Yes, he was acting like a real asshole several minutes before, but the silence was unnerving.

“Okay, guys,” Jim said. “The jig’s up! You’ve proven your point, come back out here and eat your breakfast.”

No reply came and suddenly his breathing, the sound of his jeans brushing against the floor, everything around him was too loud. Too overwhelming, too eerie for him to comprehend. Standing up, Jim hobbled from room to room where he found furniture and family photographs, but not much else.

When he found himself back in the kitchen, Jim decided to go retrieve his cell phone from the guest house. Forgoing sneakers, he walked across the cold dirt driveway and up the stairs until he’s inside the tiny living space. Grabbing the phone, he headed back to the main house while dialing his father’s number.

The cell phone rang into Jim’s ear as he walked into the kitchen and went to voicemail. Annoyed, he hung up and called his mother with the same result.

“Sammy,” he bellowed as he hits his brother’s contact information. “I’m calling you, dipshit!”

He was greeted by the horrible ringtone from Sam’s phone coming from the living room. Victorious, Jim rushed in there expecting to find his brother desperately trying to turn said ringtone off. All there was the phone ringing next to Aurelan’s purse.

Jim came close to it as the screen faded to black, revealing his missed call. Reaching out for the phone, his fingers brushed against the case when screeching metal and glass shattering draws his attention away. The device fell, forgotten, on the table as Jim went outside.

He opened the front door to chaos; to cars without drivers crashing into each other, to houses filling with smoke if they aren’t already burning, to bicycles laying on the street while their wheels spin to a halt, to objects left behind and not a single person in sight.

All around him was a barren wasteland, a waking nightmare where he’s surrounded by a hellscape and paralyzed by fear. He always imagined it to be composed of snow, grey clouds, endless and frozen.

Never the golden, fiery place in front of him.

Jim realized he stopped breathing when he fell to his hands and knees, feeling asphalt and rocks cut his skin. The post office loomed overhead when he glanced up, unable to recall wandering this far into town. The building was empty like the rest of them, empty like the streets, empty like his house…empty.

Had he been in a trance this entire time? Did he fall under a spell as he walked from the edges of his family’s property into town, staring mindlessly at the disorder around him without shoes or socks?

Had Jim finally lost his mind? There’s no way an entire town can disappear and yet, he stood alone in the remnants.

Trembling, he brought his cell phone up, fingers dancing over the screen as they dial until it’s at his ear. A busy signal beeped at him, bringing tears to his eyes as he ended the call and tried again.

It took several more attempts until Jim’s greeted by the sound of the call connecting and ringing.

Once, twice, three times…

“Nine-one-one: what’s your emergency?”

“Hello,” Jim whispered, feeling delirious. It muffled his voice. Clearing his throat, he spoke again. “Hi. I’d like to report my family missing.”

“Your family’s gone missing? When’s the last time you saw them, sir?”

Jim’s eyes darted from one focal point to another as panicked tears fall down his cold cheeks. “Before I went to the bathroom. They were right there and I shut the door. When I came back, they were gone. Everyone’s disappeared.”

“What do you mean everyone’s disappeared?”

He rose to his feet, ignoring how much they ached under his weight. “Gone,” Jim whispered, stomach churning with each step. Old Sunday school teachings filled his head—the Rapture, the End of Times, the end of humankind.

Is this what the end of the world looked like? That every person on the planet disappeared, except for him? Will this nameless operator soon vanish and leave him alone? “Everyone’s gone.”

“Sir,” the operator called. “What do you mean by everyone’s gone?”

He stared at the phone screen, finding a picture of his nephews hugging each other. “I-I d-don’t know,” Jim choked out. “I don’t know!” he yelled, flinching at the shrillness of his voice. A shadow stretched over him, darkening everything in its path until it tapered to a thin end and faded to nothing. “One moment they were there and the next they were gone!”

“Gone?” the operator asked, confused.

Jim’s eyes followed the shadow, seeking out its source. It’s the church steeple, a place he hadn’t set foot in since he was sixteen-years-old and decided that science was the answer to all the mystery in the world. Had he been a fool the entire time? Was this a cruel joke from a divine entity being played upon him?

Is this what happened to those who lost their faith? A gauntlet being cast to show that science is only an invention of non-believers? The ultimate punishment for daring to do better than the word of their creator?

“Sir?”

His fingers tightened their hold on the phone. “They fucking disappeared!” he yelled. “Everyone one of them! Vanished! I blinked and they weren’t there! Everyone’s gone!”

“Sir, I don’t understand…”

The rush of desperation sent Jim back to his knees as he stared at the steeple, noticing the weathered worn iron cross at the top of the spire, gleaming in the morning light as if it winked at him. “Do something! Can’t you people do something?”

A scream built in his throat, clawing its way out and expelled itself from Jim’s mouth.

“ _Do something_!”

 

* * *

 

(So yeah, Jim remembers.)

 

* * *

 

Steve Gardner runs a few errands in town before heading back home.

Because that’s what Jim calls himself now.

He doesn’t know what made him choose the name, other than that it sounded rather ordinary. A name attached to a man that no one would really remember. Just some guy with his doves that lived on the outskirts of town. They might mention him from time to time, but he’ll soon be forgotten.

Ordinary is good; he likes ordinary. Ordinary keeps Jim out of trouble and keeps trouble from finding him. It means fewer questions and not having to provide answers.

Even his errands are ordinary, boring even. He purchases milk and honey for his tea, produce for his meals, and a new toothbrush since his own is beginning to fray. Jim doesn’t stray from his list and pays for the items in crumpled dollar bills with King William V’s face printed on them.

He doesn’t have credit cards or a cell phone; these items leave a paper trail and Jim doesn’t want to be found. All he wants is to live out the rest of his life in peace and to leave this world with not so much of a footnote in the history of things.

His uncle, Chris, used to call him the bravest boy in the world, but Jim thinks he’s just a coward.

 

* * *

 

It begins to spit rain as Jim rides down the dirt driveway leading to his house.

By then he’s already forgotten about the nun’s cryptic smile at his denial of knowing a man named Leonard and is planning what he’ll eat for lunch. With the doves gone for the day, there isn’t much to do around the property other than shuttering the open windows on the second floor so water doesn’t get inside. Jim can busy himself with one of the worn paperback books stashed in the cubby of his bedside table and read until he finds something else to do or dozes off.

Thunder rumbles at the horizon, giving the town warning that soon it will bring a storm upon its heels and by morning, its remnants will be wet concrete and puddles.

Jim doesn’t mind the storms. It washes away the burdens of yesterday and allows for new beginnings because after all, that’s why he’s here. To begin again with a new name, new occupation, and only the whispers of his past to keep him company on nights where sleep doesn’t come easily.

No one here knows that, of course. He keeps his interactions with the townsfolk to a bare minimum, save for the nun. Jim is always polite and friendly in that closed off sort of way, never divulging too much, but giving them just enough not to ask more questions. He’s certain these people find him a bit odd and probably would find him even stranger if they knew the truth.

How long ago Jim was famous; that he attracted unwanted attention everywhere he went and it was worse than returning to his hometown after college.

Those bonds chafed, but these tore at his very soul.

People called him the Riverside Man, which Jim admits wasn’t very original, or the Man Who Stayed like he was Harry fucking Potter and JK Rowling was detailing his magic-filled adventures. There was no magic or dark wizards in San Francisco, where he settled after the Sudden Departure.

Just the people who snuck glances at him as he walked down the street or had lunch with a friend. People wondered the same thing he did—why _him_?

Some were kind and offered their best wishes with a smile, which brought honest to God tears to Jim’s eyes. Others spewed Bible verses at him, chasing him down the street as they bore a crucifix in their hands.

Then there were the angry ones, which are few and far between. Most of them sent threatening letters to his uncle’s office since Jim’s address and phone number were unlisted. Chris handled those with aplomb and they laughed about it later.

If only people knew about the ones that managed to find him by chance, such as Gary Mitchell. At least that’s what Jim thinks his name might have been; he doesn’t really remember anymore. One moment Jim was enjoying lunch with his friend, Nyota, and the next, a man whose face vaguely registered in the stores of Jim’s mind accosted him on the street. Someone whose family lived in Riverside and disappeared with the rest of the town.

Tall and boorish, Gary asked if he was Jim Kirk before shoving him against the restaurant's front window. _What makes you so fucking special,_ he snarled. _What makes you different from my family? What did you do to be spared, Jim Kirk? Huh?_

Gary repeated the questions over and over until Nyota was able to pry him off Jim with help from the maître d; by then, the damage had been done. He took off to find a place to breathe and ended up at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Strange that a single event could send him on the collision course to others. In Jim’s case, he threw himself from off a two hundred and fifty-four-foot drop and crashed into Leonard McCoy’s orbit.

Doctor Leonard McCoy, one of the surgeons who operated on Jim’s broken body once Death spat him out, is quite possibly the crankiest human being Jim has ever encountered. A single touch to his neck is what woke Jim, followed by the worst bedside manners to ever grace a doctor.

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” the heart-shaped doctor told him as he made a note on Jim’s chart. “You were barely dead.”

Barely dead; that was one way to describe the shape he was in. A broken coccyx, punctured left lung, ruptured spleen, and shattered ankle were only some of Jim’s injuries. Weeks in the hospital, months of physical therapy and in a cumbersome leg cast, years before he could convince his loved ones that he wouldn’t take a swan dive off something with great height.

Jim blinked at him, confused; he remembers that and wondering why his doctor was so unfairly attractive while he could see his ass hanging out of his hospital gown. “What?” he said, stupidly.

“You fell feet first,” Leonard explained. “That’s probably what saved your life; that and there was a fisherman nearby. He grabbed you and brought you to shore.”

He didn’t remember that part. Honestly, it all got very hazy once Jim took a step off the railing. “Fisherman?” he replied, staring at Leonard like he had two heads.

“Apparently this is Bluefin Tuna season,” he told him with a careless shrug as he continued to check Jim’s vitals. “I wouldn’t know: I don’t like fish. Tell me, are you feeling…suicidal, thrill-seeking, or playing the martyr?”

“No more than usual,” Jim replied. “Who are you?”

Looking back, it was a loaded question.

Who was Leonard McCoy? Who is anyone really? Everyone’s a mystery if one thinks about it. People hide things from one another in an act of self-protection or preservation.

No one is truly an opened book, least of all Doctor Leonard McCoy—surgeon, ex-husband, almost father, Jim’s greatest love and sorrow. He was that infuriating mixture of classically handsome and a bit rough around the edges; neither pretty or artificial. Graceful, careful even. Every movement that came from Leonard was easy and fluid as if he was one of those men who do very little to make himself attractive. He just was, end of story.

And for some reason, he loved Jim back. Perhaps from the very moment they laid eyes on each other in a clinical-smelling hospital and later when they become reacquainted at a mutual friend’s Hero’s Day celebration. He remembers Leonard threading their hands together as they sequestered themselves away from the crowd, standing close enough for Jim to admire the greens, browns, and golds that made up the other man’s hazel eyes.

“Want to get out of here?” Leonard whispered into his ear.

He did. And they did.

Hand-in-hand, they took a bus to Aquatic Park only because it was walking distance from the last stop and gloriously empty. They walked to the end of the pier, where they watched sailboats passing by Angel Island to their berth under a setting sun.

They complained about the Sudden Departure specials that aired a week leading up to the next anniversary and talked about the cult fractions springing up all over the world until Leonard asked the question everyone was afraid to ask Jim.

_What was it like?_

He knew what Leonard meant as they stared at each other under fading sunlight and the thick marine layer plowing through the Golden Gate Strait.

Peaceful had been Jim’s answer because it was and he couldn’t bring himself to lie. As Leonard drew him in and carefully thumbing the stubble on his chin, Jim wondered where this night would take them. The answer came as soon as they kissed with the salty breeze blowing through their hair and cooling their skin.

They go to Leonard’s apartment, to the privacy of his bedroom where Leonard fingered Jim open while sucking on his cock like a—pardon the pun—fucking Hoover. It had been a long while since Jim had slept with anyone and _damn_ , he missed the feeling of another body against his own. Of hard muscle and calloused hands pinning him to the mattress until Jim begged to be fucked.

Leonard did. He took Jim apart and put him back together again.

And again and again.

He thinks of their weekend in Mexico, remembering the conversation leading up to it. How Jim sprung the idea on Leonard, invoking the silly nickname he came up with because of Leonard’s colorful diatribe about broken bones and how Jim should have been turned into a pancake when he jumped.

“Why Mexico?” Leonard asked him as they laid in bed.

Jim shrugged, drumming his fingers against his lover’s skin. “Booze, beaches…”

“There are booze and beaches _here_ ,” Leonard pointed out.

“Warm weather,” Jim said with a grin, running his thumb over a tuft of dark chest hair while Leonard’s chuckle vibrated under him. “So are you in, Bones?”

Mexico; where they went fishing and drank beers on the beach. Where they made love at night underneath mosquito netting and listened to the water crashing against the rocks below.

Where Jim was certain he was in love with Leonard and told him so.

He still hears Leonard’s voice at night, faint and ghostly as Jim lies in the grey area of sleep and wakefulness. That deep, rumbling baritone that whispers his name and causes him to sit up while his heart pounds wildly in his chest and goosebumps pimple his skin. Like thunder overhead, except it’s all in Jim’s mind.

An aching memory of someone who broke his heart and still holds the pieces.

The most pathetic ending to a relationship that had the potential to transcend space and time. To Jim, it’s only fitting.

 

* * *

 

The rest of Jim’s day is an ordinary as the one before it.

He puts away his shopping and the cloth bags he carried it in, as usual. After straightening up, Jim makes himself lunch and a pot of tea, which he eats at the kitchen table where he watches the storm come in, wetting the land and bringing the scent of rain with it. As he feeds himself, Jim begins to plan the following day and what he’ll do to keep himself busy until the doves come back.

He could garden, he supposes while he smears avocado onto his toast. Pull some weeds, trim the hedges, something to keep him occupied.

After all, that’s what his time is spent doing these days; keeping himself occupied until the end of this life. Whenever that happens to be. For some it’s tomorrow, for others it’s years for now, and for Jim…well, he’s not entirely sure.

There are days he feels as if he’s lived a hundred lives and he’s so very tired from the buzz it creates in his head.

Pushing away such mundane thoughts, he cleans up his plate and the now empty teapot before adjourning upstairs. The house creaks under his bare feet like it always does, moaning as he goes to his bedroom and strips himself naked to pull on a worn pair of sweatpants before lying down.

He doesn’t bother to pull the quilt back and falls asleep to a strange lullaby created by rain steadily pelting the windows and tin roof.

Dreams come for him, as they do with most people, in splintered images until they form into a discernible memory. He’s sitting in a dreary office with a video camera pointed at him as he speaks to it.

“My name is James Tiberius Kirk,” he says calmly. “I was born on January 4, 1980. This is a copy of today’s paper. I, hereby, indemnify all individuals for the procedure that’s about to occur. I am of sound mind and body, and I am acting of my own free will.”

The camera’s recording light shuts off and the two people operating it begin conversing in French. The man, whose name Jim thinks might be Balthazar, sounds annoyed while the woman, Jaylah, listens to him before replying in exasperation. For all the years Jim studied Spanish and Latin, he finds himself wishing he bothered learning more.

“What?” he asks, setting the newspaper in his lap. “Something wrong?”

Jaylah turns to him, her scowl fading as she clears her throat. She was the one who told Jim of this strange and seemingly impossible opportunity, after Erik Estrada— _t_ _he_ Erik Estrada that everyone thought departed, the same Erik Estrada who holed himself up in Iceland, of all places—introduced them before he went off the grid. She gave him a thumb drive of videos and a business card. “Think about it,” she told him with a mysterious smile. “Do your due diligence if you need to, but you know where to find us. If you want to see them again.”

He did find them; he cleared their tests, asked how high when they said jump and gave them twenty-five thousand dollars in cash for this opportunity.

Because nothing is free, after all. Not even his conscience.

“We need you to be more convincing,” she tells him, offering an apologetic smile.

“ _More_ convincing?” Jim repeats, baffled.

Balthazar mutters under his breath and she hushes him, firing back in rapid French.

“What did he say?” he demands, eyeing the both of them wearily.

“I want you to do it again,” Balthazar replies in English. It’s the first time Jim has heard him speak it.

Jim frowns. “Why?”

“Because I do not believe you,” the other man answers.

He blinks. “ _Excuse me_?”

“Pardon me, but you’re lying, Monsieur Kirk,” Balthazar says. He sighs, shaking his head. “You’re just saying what we want to hear.”

His body goes from warm to ice cold, leaving his lips tingling as the other man’s statement sinks in. He stares at them in silence, sitting in the uncomfortable folding chair while time passes. “You invited me here,” Jim intones in disbelief. “And then you made me go through all those tests.” He shifts, relieving the numbness in his butt cheek. “But I did them. I did every single one so you’d have no choice but to let me get into your _machine_. So I don’t give a _shit_ what you want to hear, Dr. Edison.”

Jaylah cuts in. “Could you say your family’s names?”

“What?”

“Your family,” Jaylah repeats, kindly. “Their names. Do you think you could say their names?”

He clears his throat, feeling the letters forming on his tongue. Names he hasn’t spoken in years, not since the Sudden Departure. “David and Peter…”

“I meant in your statement, Monsieur Kirk,” she adds, smiling. Jaylah must see the apprehension written into his features for Jim’s never been good at hiding his emotions. “Would you like to try again?”

To try again; that’s why he’s here. To go back and try again, to make things right, and to be with his family. Where Jim thinks he belongs now that Leonard’s gone.

He nods once, twice. “Okay.” Jim turns back to the camera and stares into the lens, breathing in and out. “My name is James Tiberius Kirk. I was born on January 4, 1980. This is a copy of today’s paper because today is the I’m leaving to be with them. I’m leaving…” Tears sting his eyes and cause his throat to ache. Biting his bottom lip, he shakes his head. “To be with my parents George and Winona, my brother Sam, my sister-in-law Aurelan, and my nephews.” He pauses, thinking of the boy’s faces and how much he misses holding them in his arms. “David and Peter; I’m ready to go now.”

Once he’s composed himself, Jaylah and Balthazar escort him outside towards the chamber. Chris is waiting for them with his Madlib booklet and joins them. He wraps an arm around Jim, pulling him close as scientists pass them by with all sorts of strange equipment.

The strangest of all is a silver orb with the impression of a person melted into it.

“Is that…” Chris questions, watching in disbelief as it goes by. “Was _that_ a person?”

“It’s a fossil,” Jaylah explains. “The person is gone.”

Jim huffs a quiet chuckle and nudges his uncle. “Maybe they’ll let you keep mine,” he whispers, much to Chris’s chagrin as they follow the pair of doctors into a mobile office.

“As soon as we administer the saline drip,” Balthazar explains as he flicks on the lights, “you will disrobe outside the truck. Once you are inside, you will see the event chamber at the far end. You just walk to it.” He gestures at the chairs in front of his desk and takes a seat.

Once he and Chris sit down, Balthazar continues. “You may experience nausea or discomfort as you pass by the undulating laser array while it cycles up. Do not touch them.”

Jim fidgets in his seat and nods. “What then?”

“You will step into the event chamber and close the exit port behind you and turn the latch to the left. Hard to the left; it will stick,” Jaylah interjects. “Then pull your knees towards your chest and hold them there. Okay?”

Sparing Chris a look, Jim nods again. “Okay.”

“Good,” Jaylah says. “We will be monitoring from inside here. Once inside the event chamber, you will be able to hear and we will be able to hear you. When you’re ready, we will start the ignition sequence. You will hear three tones. After the third tone, the chamber will fill up with fluid. It will have the same consistency as water, but it is not. It contains metals that will be irradiated. Once this occurs, the fluid will solidify.”

He swallows as the information processes and wonders if nausea before the procedure is normal.

“Do not ingest or breathe in any of the fluid as your lungs will solidify upon transport.” Jaylah offers him a calming smile and Jim realizes he must be turning a bit green around the gills. “Can you hold your breath for thirty seconds?”

“Yes,” Jim answers without hesitation.

Balthazar and Jaylah trade glances. “Well,” she says. “That’s it.”

Later as Jim and Chris sit in chairs overlooking the ocean, he watches as saline drips from the bag into the IV line attached to the top of his hand. He’s already changed out of his clothes and into a robe and slippers while his uncle has managed to track down a pen.

“Activity,” Chris says.

Jim taps his fingers against the armrest. “Pole dancing,” he replies. His uncle laughs as he writes it down.

“A noun.”

“Tribble.”

Chris snorts as his pen moves across the paper. “A tribble?” he asks with a chuckle.

“Don’t ask,” Jim says with a smirk.

His uncle nods. “Okay, I won’t,” he concedes, merrily. “Last one; a woman’s name.”

“Antonia,” Jim answers.

“Antonia, perfect.” Chris sits up straight in an attempt to maintain some decorum as he begins to recite the MadLib. “Okay, here we go: James Tiberius Kirk, age four hundred and seventeen, was vaporized by a consortium of international physicists last Tuesday outside Never Never Land. Mr. Kirk was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt where he returned after college to squeeze out a family; his spiffy husband, Colin Firth, and his beloved geese, David and Peter.”

Jim begins to laugh as his uncle continues on. “Admired by his coworkers, he was a longtime employee at the Department of Sudden Diarrhea,” Chris chuckles. “You really should have thought that one through, kid. Anyways…in his spare time, Mr. Kirk enjoyed crosswords, exposing frauds, and pole dancing. He is survived by his aunt, Simone Torres-Pike, and terminally ill tribble, Christopher Pike. As he lives on in our memories in the Great Antonia in the Sky.”

Both of them dissolve into deep, belly aching laughter as they stare out at the water. Tears pool at the corners of their eyes, which they dab away. Chris removes his glasses, clearing his throat.

“There will be no funeral or memorial services,” he whispers, eyes still bright, but sad.

Jim reaches for his hand, giving it a squeeze. “They’re so boring,” he assures. “Besides, with an obituary like that…I think we outdid ourselves.”

“Happy to oblige,” Chris replies as he places the book and pen into the pocket of his jacket.

“You used to send me those things when I went to that awful summer camp,” Jim muses. “Tarsus, do you remember that?”

His uncle nods with a grimace. “Wasn’t that a church camp for troubled youth?”

“Or something,” Jim says with a shrug. “I hated that place so much…it was before mom and dad shipped me off to you guys.”

“Simone and I were surprised that you weren’t speaking tongues,” Chris adds.

Rolling his eyes, Jim sighs. “Do you remember what you said to me the night before I left?”

“Nuh uh. Brush your teeth?”

Jim makes a face. “You said I was the bravest boy in the universe.” Tears come again, though this time he can keep them at bay. “And every time you called or sent me a new Madlib, that’s who you asked for. The Bravest Boy in the Universe.”

The moment he glances at his uncle’s teary expression, they fall down his cheeks. “You drive me fucking nuts, Chris, but you’ve always been a great tribble.”

His uncle’s hand squeezes him a bit tighter. “If I was a great tribble, I would be trying to talk you out of this.”

 _Like Leonard tried to do._ The words are unsaid, but Jim hears them anyway. Sniffing, he laces their fingers together. “You’re great because you’re not trying.”

“I’m scared,” Chris confesses.

Jim knows. “I’ll be fine. I’ll tell mom you said hi when I get there.”

“You’re always going to be fine. I’m scared about what happens when I go back to Simone,” Chris says. “I’m scared of the chemicals they’ll put in my body. So I get better and I’m scared it won’t work.” He wipes his cheek; it’s the first time they’ve talked about his cancer diagnosis, which Chris has avoided like the plague. “I’m scared of dying, James, but most of all, I’m scared that I’ll survive.”

Survival is the most frightening thing about life as Jim has found and he cannot begrudge his uncle there. He smiles weakly. “You want to come with me instead?”

“I think, Jim, that it defeats the purpose.”

They lapse into silence and listen to the waves crashing against the rocks before washing back out to sea.

“What are you going to tell people?” Jim asks. “About me? About what happened here?”

“Whatever you want me to.”

Chris brings Jim’s hand up to his mouth and kisses it as Balthazar and Jaylah come over to them. More tears stream down his face and he doesn’t care; these moments are precious and dwindling. To hell what these strangers may think of his emotions and choices.

“Are you ready?” Jaylah asks.

Sniffling and scoffing because that’s what Chris does best, he turns to them and says, “Of course he’s ready. He’s the bravest boy in the universe.”

Time passes and Jim finds himself standing outside the event chamber’s walls in the company of two scientists in hazmat suits. The breezing is beginning to pick up now and passing through the thin material of his robe. He breathes in and out, counting forwards and backward until Jim pulls at the slash, loosening it until it falls to the ground.

He slips the robe from his shoulders as he takes a step forward and another. At the base of the metal stairs, Jim’s as naked as the day he was born. Fitting for what he’s about to do as it’s almost like a rebirth. The chamber is a womb and he is beginning anew.

Almost.

He brushes the plastic seals away from his body as he steps through into the laser array Jaylah described. The event chamber lies beyond the far end through a cold, impersonal corridor. Jim realizes how many others have gone before him as he moves forward. All those men and women seeking their loved ones so desperately that they left every worldly possession behind.

Jim feels nothing as he walks by the lasers, though the voices of his parents, his brother, the cries of his nephews ring loudly in his ears. It’s like they are following him, shouting so he will not forget why he’s doing this.

Why he’s leaving the only person he’s ever loved behind.

He can’t think of Leonard, not now. Not ever. Too many horrible words were said before he left the hotel room, never to return.

The last image Jim will have of him is his backside as he slammed the door behind him, obliterating Jim’s heart.

Jim squares his shoulders and steps inside the area where the clear event chamber is. Nervousness flutters as he circles around it, towards the latch that will give him entry. The last earthly thing that will contain him before the next big adventure.

He opens the door, the pneumatic hiss filling the room as Jim steps inside and reaches for the latch. He pulls hard and closes it, shifting it to the left as Jaylah instructed.

Around him, the chamber and machines hiss and clank, humming to life as Jim pulls his knees to his chest and waits.

A horn sounds, gears click, and he continues waiting.

The lights shut off, only leaving the ones inside the event chamber to illuminate Jim’s way.

A beep comes, monotone and soft.

“Jim, can you hear me?” Jaylah asks over the speaker.

He turns to the source of the sound and nods. “Yes.”

“Your uncle is here with us.”

“Hello, kiddo.”

Jim closes his eyes, feeling relief wash over him. He’s going to miss his voice. “Hi, Chris.”

“I love you,” Chris tells him.

“I love you, too.”

Balthazar speaks. “We’re going to begin now.”

The first tone buzzes and he pulls at his knees even tighter than before. Machines whir and churn, the sound deafening inside of the chamber.

A second tone comes; Jim takes in several deep breaths and holds as a gear clicks into place.

All of the sounds ring in his ears as the chamber fills with the fluid Jaylah spoke of. Cool and transparent like water. A flash of him jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge comes to mind, though Jim doesn’t remember how it felt when he hit the bay below.

But he’ll remember this. Until the day he dies, he’ll remember this.

The third tone screams, changing and molding into something else entirely. A chime, a bell, a…

_Doorbell._

Doorbell?

Jim’s eyes spring up as a gasp tumbles from his mouth. He stares up at the ceiling, wondering how long he’s been sleeping when the doorbell goes off again. Scratching his head, Jim gets up and stumbles downstairs, grabbing a sweatshirt he left dangling on the banister. He pulls it on over his naked torso as someone knocks on the door.

“Coming,” Jim calls with impatience. He opens it, expecting one of his neighbors, to find himself staring at Leonard _fucking_ McCoy.

A man he hasn’t seen in years; nearly a decade, maybe more, and goddamn _him_ , he looks good. Great even—age has touched him like a fine wine, and Jim cringes at the analogy even if it is true. Threads of grey weave themselves through his dark hair; Jim has a feeling that soon it will be more salt than pepper. His skin has more wrinkles than Jim remembers, running deep along the corners of his eyes and mouth.

Clean shaven and older, Leonard McCoy is still the same unfairly handsome, maddening man that left Jim in a hotel room who is now staring at him. Of course, he looks put-together because Jim can’t remember him being anything but—even towards the end—while Jim is a complete mess in ratty clothes and spectacular bed hair.

“Jim?” Leonard drawls, astonished as if he’s seen a ghost. Hell, he even sounds the same! His mouth twitches before turning into a dimpled smile. “Leonard. Leonard McCoy.”

If he could speak, Jim has no idea what he would say, so he continues staring while his mouth hangs open.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” Leonard continues, sounding uncertain. “I was one of your surgeons; fixed your leg back in San Francisco.” He gestures nervously. “We didn’t know each other really well. We only talked a couple of times, really. Nice conversations…”

Jim blinks, confused. That doesn’t sound right…there was more to their story than that.

“I don’t expect you to remember,” he says dismissively as confidence enters his voice and body language. “It was a really long time ago.”

“What are you doing?” Jim asks.

Leonard shrugs as he turns to survey his surroundings, blowing air out of the perfect O that is his mouth. He grins and, damn him, he looks even more attractive than Jim remembers. “Well, I’ve been kinda wandering around New Zealand on vacation. Kinda gettin’ off the grid. Avoiding all the touristy stuff. I like to get a little lost, you know.” He chuckles. “Anyway, I was in that little town down the road, and I saw you riding your bike. I thought to myself, holy shit, I think that’s Jim Kirk!” His hazel eyes wander over Jim for a moment; goosebumps rise under the material of Jim’s clothes.

That look; Jim remembers that look. All too well. It usually involved him bent over a solid surface or pressed against a wall—any wall, it didn’t matter—while Leonard’s cock was shoved up his ass.

“I asked around and found out where you lived. And here you are,” Leonard lowering his voice, still amazed.

He shakes his head. “That’s not what happened.”

It’s Leonard’s turn to blink. “Sorry?”

“You showed a picture of me to the nun at the church; that’s how you found out where I lived,” Jim tells him.

“W-why?” Confusion, genuine confusion, washes over Leonard’s face. “Why would I have a picture of you?”

Jim balls his fists in frustration and stomps. “I was _just_ there! She asked if I—”

“Are you married?” Leonard asks, suddenly.

The argument on his tongue dies. “What?”

“Are you married?” the other man repeats, motioning to Jim’s hands. He looks…hopeful, maybe, dare Jim even think it. “Are you seeing somebody? I noticed that you weren’t wearing a wedding band…”

“No,” Jim snaps, tucking them into the front pouch of his sweatshirt. “I’m not. _Married_.”

“And I saw that they were having some sort of party in town,” Leonard continues on, ignoring Jim’s biting tone. He turns, pointing towards the direction of Eltham before looking back at him.

Gone is the infuriating cockiness—swagger, Jim once called it when he had been annoyed with him. Leonard appears humbled, nervous and doesn’t wear the look well. He never did, even when Jim wanted to wring his neck. “I always wanted to ask you out, so maybe…maybe you’d like to go with me?”

Of all the things that broke him, Jim never thought there would be something else. _Someone_ else. That Leonard would show up on his doorstep after years of not seeing each other, thinking that he went back to San Francisco and moved on. At least that’s what Jim always hoped.

That Leonard would forget about him and never question Chris when he told everyone that he was dead because his uncle had only done what he asked. That Leonard would have the uncomplicated life he always wanted, the one that Jim—even though he wanted, too—couldn’t give.

Fuck, he wanted to. He wanted to so badly and he never told him.

“I think you should go,” Jim stammers, hoping he does.

And hoping he doesn’t.

Leonard chuckles ruefully. “I get it,” he says. “Some guy you barely remember blows onto your doorstep, asking you on a date with him…” His hazel eyes glaze over with a faraway glint as his voice trails off as if he’s remembering something out of reach.

 _What happened to you?_ Jim wonders, watching him.

“Well,” Leonard sighs. “I had to try.”

 _Why can’t you try to understand, Bones?_ Jim pleaded with him once, long ago, as Leonard grabbed his things and left the hotel key card on the table.

His eyes blur with tears. “Please,” he begs in a small voice. “Just go.”

Concern washes over Leonard’s face. “If you change your mind, they’re shutting down all of the main streets,” he says, carefully. “You can’t miss it.”

Then he walks away, towards a rental truck parked next to the dove coop. Leonard moves slower, but then again, so does Jim. They’re older now, no longer the young men they once were. “It was good seeing you,” he says, having turned back with a bemused smile. “Jim.”

With one last glance, he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

First, he smokes the biggest bowl he can pack and then he gets on his bike, pedaling as fast as his stoned ass can carry him to the nearest satellite phone.

Halfway there, Jim remembers that his calling card in the drawer of the butcher’s block and has to go home. In near-tears and cursing at himself, he rides back to retrieve and departs once more, muttering angrily the entire way there.

The Celstra booth is located on a seldom used road, which makes absolutely no sense to him. Jim’s always wondered whose bright idea it was to put the damn thing virtually in the middle of nowhere, now more so than ever.

Then again he’s one to talk, being more or less baked out of his mind like the genius he is.

It takes him several tries to push the calling card into the slot for his hands are shaking so. The idea of having a drink sounds rather appealing at the moment even though Jim hardly ever drinks. He hasn’t had one…

Well.

He hasn’t had one in a while.

He dials her number, knowing it’s too early in the week for one of their conversations, but he figures this—Leonard showing up like a bad penny—constitutes an emergency. Surely, she’ll understand. The call connects and rings through; once, twice…

“Hello?”

Standing in the middle of nowhere, wearing sweats and a pair of sandals he managed to throw on before leaving the house, Jim all but shrieks into the receiver. “Did you tell him?”

“Jim?”

He palms his face. “Did you tell him?” he asks, slowly and more deliberately.

She stammers, fumbling for an answer only to settle with an open-ended statement. He hates that, but then again, she’s a shrink. Or was—maybe she’s retired now. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

“Leonard!” he shouts. “Fucking Bones! He’s _here_! He _found_ me!”

“What? H-he’s there? In New Zealand?”

He might be punch something, so help him… “Do you know of another _New Zealand_ , Jocelyn?” Jim hisses into the phone. “Did you tell him?”

“God no!” Jocelyn replies. “Jim, honey.”

“Because if you did, just say so, okay?”

“I didn’t,” she insists.

The conversation lulls; Jocelyn sounds like she might be outside with the kids—her and Clay’s—while he just breathes heavily into the phone. Panic has a funny way of making Jim lose his mind and, maybe, smoking the shit he bought from the choir boy wasn’t the best approach.

“We established boundaries the first time you called me,” Jocelyn reminds him, calmly. In the way, Jim has always appreciated about her—that uncanny ability to nudge without being condescending. “Clear boundaries. I don’t tell you about the people here and I don’t tell the people here about you.”

He knows this, he really does. It’s just that…well, Leonard showing up here with some sort of apparent amnesia and asking him out on a date has Jim in panic mode. He’s about two seconds away from packing up all of his belongings and getting the hell out of Dodge. Only Jocelyn can talk him off this ledge…and if she can’t, he’s pretty much fucked.

“I would never betray you, Jim,” Jocelyn assures.

“Then how did he find me?” he asks, voice cracking. “How did he know where to look?”

Jocelyn tuts. “Well, how did he say he found you?”

“He said that he was here on vacation,” Jim tells her, shaking his head in disbelief. There was a moment when he first saw Leonard on his doorstep that he thought he was still dreaming. “And he saw me riding my bike through town. Then— _then—_ he came to my house and knocked on my door, like…I don’t know, Joss! He acted like we were casual acquaintances. That the last time he saw me was when I was discharged from the hospital! Like…we were never together; like none of it ever happened! Can you believe that shit?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Hello?” Jim barks into the phone. “Joss? Did I lose you?”

“He acted like you two were never together?” she questions.

Jim scowls. “Didn’t I _just_ say that?”

“Huh,” she says.

“Huh? What does that even mean, huh?” Jim snaps as he picks at a faded sticker stuck to the booth.

He can hear the wheels spinning in Jocelyn’s head. “I’m just surprised,” she answers.

“Well, you _were_ married to him. Has he ever done this before?”

“Jim, honey,” Jocelyn giggles. “We’ve been divorced for about fifteen years. And no, he hasn’t. Except for that one time we role played…”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “No. Nope! Don’t want to hear about your sexual escapades with _my_ ex, thanks.”

Jocelyn’s giggles dissolve into full blown laughter and yes, Jim knows how weird it is that his ex’s ex-wife is his therapist. Truth is, he likes Jocelyn. The events leading to the collapse of her marriage to Leonard happened long before he came into the picture. They both admit there were cracks in the foundations before its actual demise, but neither wanted to cop up to it.

The Sudden Departure happened; they watched as their unborn child disappeared from an ultrasound screen and broke everything wide open.

Funny how the end works out that way.

“Well?” Jim finally says.

“Well, what?”

“Joss,” he whines. “About Bones!”

She falls silent again because she’s thinking. “It’s a very un-Leonard like thing to do,” Jocelyn finally admits, though she doesn’t sound particularly worried.

“Is he crazy?” Jim asks quietly, despite being in the middle of nowhere. The only company he has is the lush greenery and a rabbit crossing the dirt road.

“Does he seem crazy?”

Scratching his head, he shrugs. “No,” he says. “He seemed…happy.”

“Huh.”

“Will you please stop fucking saying that?” he hisses. “You’re like _him_ when he starts using metaphors!”

Jocelyn scoffs. “Honey, he’s Southern. They love that shit.”

“Why is he doing this?” Jim groans, pretending to ignore her.

“I couldn’t tell you. Did he say anything else?”

His cheeks begin to burn with embarrassment at the innocent question. Jim gnaws on his bottom lip, abusing the delicate skin with his front teeth. “He asked me on a date,” he admits quietly.

“A date?”

Jocelyn sounds surprised; he hates when she sounds surprised. “I guess there’s a party in town tonight,” Jim says a bit too quickly in a poor attempt to be casual about it. “And he asked me to go.”

“And you don’t want to go?”

Setting his jaw, he shakes his head. “No.”

“So what do you want, Jim?”

“Obviously I want him to leave me alone.” _Obviously_ , because what person in their right mind would go to such lengths to stay hidden? What person would bike all the way to a satellite phone in their pajamas to have a low-level panic attack while on the line with their therapist who’s halfway across the world?

A very neurotic person, that’s who.

“Then why are you calling me?” Jocelyn asks.

He scowls again, feeling more wrinkles digging their way into his skin. “What kind of question is that?”

“I can’t make Leonard leave you alone; I’m a half a world away,” she explains. “So why did you call me?”

“Because I thought you told him where I was!” Jim growls into the phone.

Jocelyn sighs. “Come on, Jim. You know I wouldn’t do that,” she says over the sound of footsteps. A door shuts; she must be in her office or a bedroom. “You called me because you wanted me to say it’s okay to go on a date with him.”

What?

_What!_

“I _do not_ want to go on a _fucking date_ with _him_!” Jim yells.

Because he doesn’t. He absolutely does not!

“Gotcha, but _if_ you did, it’s okay.”

It’s okay—two words that hold so much meaning and all Jim wants to do is run away. And there’s Jocelyn, who is so infuriatingly right at times, telling him that he can _still_ want Leonard after all this time. That he’s still allowed to feel things.

That she won’t react to his very conscious baiting because Jocelyn knows better.

He scoffs, offended. “Christ, Jocelyn!”

“Same time next week?” she deadpans. Jim hears the amusement in her tone. Dammit!

With a scream, he slams the phone onto the receiver.

 

* * *

 

He goes home and showers because he’s an absolute mess of a human being.

The ankles of his pants are caked in dirt and mud where it isn’t speckled on his chin, he’s sweaty, his armpits stink, and he prefers nighttime showers anyways.

Jim Kirk _absolutely_ isn’t going home because he’s going to see Leonard McCoy. Because Jim Kirk could give two shits about Leonard McCoy and his stupid dimples and the way he disrupts his life. He has no desire to stare into his hazel eyes or thread his fingers through his silver-streaked hair.

No, Jim is going home and showering because he’s fucking freezing and his clattering teeth are starting to make his head hurt. That’s right; he’s going home and staying in with a cup of tea and his book. He’s going to seclude himself in his bed and read until his eyelids grew heavy.

Because Jim is _absolutely_ _not_ going to shower and make himself look presentable for Leonard. He’s not going to step under the spray of hot water and scrub away the dirt from his body until he’s pink and clean. He isn’t shaving his stubble away for Leonard; nope, it’s because he swears there are bits of mud still stuck inside of it.

Jim keeps telling himself that all the things he does—getting dressed in his best pair of trousers and a black sweater he found at the secondhand store—isn’t for Leonard until he realizes that, well, it _is_. And he’s the schmuck who realizes it last.

God, Jim hates himself sometimes.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t a party that shuts down the main street, but a wedding.

A fucking wedding.

A fucking wedding that Leonard has invited Jim to as his date, which dawns on him once he steps into the fray of dancing well-wishers with piles of colorful Mardi Gras beads around their necks. He squeezes through them while ducking off any attempts of setting any plastic necklaces on him with a glare. The crowd is drunk enough to laugh it off and carry on with their celebrating; hell, even the nun is here!

She stands off to edge of the dance floor with a glass of cheap champagne in had as she merrily chats up a tall man with dark hair. A flush warms her complexion, giving Jim a glimpse of a younger, more carefree version of her long since tucked away. She and her companion lean closely together, like a couple whose conversation is meant to be secret even if it’s in plain sight.

For a single terrifying moment, Jim thinks it’s Leonard. This man, while handsome enough, is most definitely too slender and pale to be him.

Besides, Leonard is sitting at one of the tables with a multitude of beads over his suit jacket and button-down shirt as he chats with whom Jim assumes is the bride. It’s not the lopsided veil or white dress of lace that gives her away, but the blissful smile on her face.

He’s probably had the same one on his lips a million times over but never noticed it.

How cruel that happiness can be both life changing and fleeting; Jim almost wishes he never knew it. Almost, and then his eyes find Leonard’s through the crowd and he thinks he’ll drown in that delighted smile.

Leonard raises his hand and waves Jim over as he listens to the bride, bobbing his head up and down at whatever she’s telling him. Jim knows he isn’t listening because he’s got that look on his face.

The one where Jim is the only person in the room and to hell with everyone else. The one he saw hundreds of times over the course of their relationship, the same look Jim has tried to remember late at night when he’s lonely and wishes he had chosen differently.

“You made it,” Leonard says as he stands up, smiling brightly.

“You weren’t sure?” the bride asks, raising a perfectly arched and completely skeptical black brow as she looks between the two of them.

A flush spreads on Jim’s cheeks as he shrugs. “You didn’t tell me it was a wedding.”

“Minor detail,” Leonard assures while the bride snort-laughs.

She stands, revealing the pregnant swell of her stomach. “Deanna,” she says, introducing herself. “And don’t worry about it, mate. We’ve invited the entire town, and knowing my husband, perhaps the one over.”

Jim nods, still uncertain about his presence at a stranger’s wedding wearing a too-casual outfit. “I didn’t have a formal invite.”

“Neither did your chap,” Deanna replies, gesturing to Leonard. “I met him at the cafe around the bend and demanded he come after he told me about you.” She turns to the other man and nudges his side. “He’s a shy one, but fit, eh? No wonder you traveled halfway around the world to find him.”

Now it’s Leonard’s turn to blush. He lowers his eyes sheepishly, the first time he’s taken them off Jim since he got here, and coughs. “He’s certainly something, isn’t he?”

“Well, while you two get to know each other again, I’m going to find my husband,” Deanna tells them, cheerily. She leans in, kissing Leonard’s cheek before waddling off into the crowd.

Leonard gestures to one of the chairs. “Sit,” he says. “Relax…enjoy some food.” Once they both take a seat, he turns back to the bride who has found her groom. “Do you know them?”

“I think her husband owns the pub in town,” Jim mentions as he watches them kiss. “You told her about me?”

“I _mentioned_ you to her,” Leonard corrects. “Said I had spotted someone I knew in town and wanted to ask him out, then she and her husband insisted that I come tonight. With a guest, of course.”

Somehow Jim isn’t entirely convinced. He pictures Leonard meeting Deanna and being charmed by her friendliness as they have lunch together where he tells her about, well, _him_. What Leonard says, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to. It could be the same garbage he fed Jim back at the house or, perhaps, the story of how they met and fell in love, only to lose each other in the end.

It’s not a great love story, but it had been love and it was the story they wrote themselves.

“Of course,” Jim says quietly. Silence follows; he loathes silences, especially of the semi-awkward variety. “So…are you still in San Francisco? A doctor, right?”

“Surgeon,” Leonard replies. He reaches for his tumbler of scotch and sips it. It’s nice to see that certain habits of his haven’t changed. “And yes. Still in San Francisco all these years. I used to hate the fog and now I can’t even imagine living anywhere else. It’s home.”

Jim smirks, remembering very well of how much Leonard bitched about the lack of seasons and the fog always blanketing the city, even in the summer. He hated the mist, the dampness, and the chill. “How years has it been since you moved there?”

“A little over twenty, I imagine. Maybe more. What about you? What brought you out here?” Leonard asks. His fingers curl around the perspiring glass, tapping against it in a soft melody.

He reaches for the tumbler, slipping it from Leonard’s grasp to have a taste. Jim keeps his gaze fixed to Leonard’s as he takes a sip. “Special circumstances.”

“Cryptic,” the other man teases as Jim slides the tumbler back to him. He drinks from it and nudges in Jim’s direction. “Will you tell me eventually?”

Jim shrugs. “So what have you been up to since the last time I saw you?”

He takes a hint and begins telling Jim about his life in recent years as they share a tumbler of scotch. Gaila and Scotty got married, Ben and Hikaru adopted a little girl, Geoff married as well while Christine and her husband divorced a few years ago. “I saw your aunt not that long ago,” Leonard mentions. “Simone, right?”

“Yeah,” Jim answers. Other than Jocelyn, she’s the only other person who knew where he was. They talk on a weekly basis. During those conversations, she nags him to get a cell phone. “She remarried after Chris…”

A hard lump forms in his throat, which he washes away with a mouthful of scotch.

“I was hoping you’d come to the funeral,” Leonard quietly admits.

“We said our goodbyes in person.”

Leonard presses his lips together. “It was a beautiful service,” he tells him. “Over a thousand people came; they had to set up speakers so everyone could hear. They loved him, you know. Your uncle.”

He knows because Chris was an amazing man. He wanted to do better and set an example for the citizens of the city he protected.

And mostly because Jim loved Chris, too.

In truth, by the time Jim came back, Chris was already dead. The brain tumor came quickly and aggressively, Simone told him. He died in his sleep, she mentioned as if it would make Jim feel better. It doesn’t, but he’s learned to accept it.

He can’t change the past and he’s okay with that. Mostly because Jocelyn beat it into his skull until he believed her.

“What about you?” Jim asks, tilting his head. “You’ve told me about everyone else, but nothing about you. What is new in the life of Leonard McCoy?”

Leonard brushes his hair back and grins lopsidedly. “I retired last year,” he says with a gentle huff. “Can you believe it? Retired before fifty-five? Never thought I’d see the day!”

“That’s pretty young.” Because it is. He remembers being in his thirties and thinking that his forties, hell, even his fifties were ancient until they weren’t. At forty-seven, Jim still has a lot of life to live even if he’s already done so. “What made you do it? Did you win the lottery?”

The other man shakes his head as his fingers go to unbutton his shirt, revealing a pale, thin scar beginning at his sternum. “Had a heart attack a year and a half ago,” Leonard explains, leaning closer to Jim.

Jim’s vision blackens at the edges and he swears that he might throw up. Leonard, _Bones_ , this bastard who shattered him into a million pieces almost _died_. He almost left Jim before they ever got a chance to see each other again and…

He doesn’t want to imagine a world without him. Not ever.

“Pretty bad one…my cardiologist says it was an undiagnosed condition I’ve had my entire life,” Leonard prattles on, unaware. “So nothing I could have done to prevent it.”

“Other than finding out about it sooner?” Jim comments in a small voice, half muffled by the tumbler of scotch.

Leonard chuckles and nods in agreement. “Other than that.” He begins buttoning his shirt and smiles again. “They cut me open and put one of those pacemakers in there to keep things in line.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Jim teases, passing the scotch back to the other man.

“It’s working,” he says, winking.

He’s about to speak again when a man’s voice booms over his. “He came!”

Both Jim and Leonard turn to see the groom, a tall, striking man with a full beard and dark blue eyes approaching them with Deanna in tow. Their wide grins make them look like lunatics.

 _Like they’re madly in love,_ Jim muses to himself. A momentary pang of jealousy flares in the center of his chest as he watches them.

“You said you didn’t think he was coming,” the groom says to Leonard, clapping him on the shoulder. He turns his stare to Jim. “He didn’t think you were coming.”

Blushing, Jim reaches for the scotch and drinks some more. “You mentioned that.”

“Nice of you to dress up for a wedding,” he comments in a teasing tone.

Jim is about to launch into how he didn’t know it was a wedding because someone hadn’t told him. Deanna cuts in, tapping her husband’s arm. “ _William_ ,” she scolds, playfully.

“I’m just fucking with you,” the groom—William—tells Jim with a mischievous grin. He looks to Leonard. “He’s very serious.”

When Jim glances at Leonard, he finds a man besotted. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he says.

“That’s well and good,” William agrees. He snatches up a bowl that Jim’s only just noticed; it appears to be a fishbowl filled with folded pieces of paper. “Did you write something down?”

Leonard nods, pointing towards the nun. “Yeah, gave it to her.”

“And you,” William says, addressing Jim with the bowl and a blank piece of paper. A pen rests near Leonard’s arm, which he didn’t notice until now. “Want to write a message of love to send out to the rest of the world?”

He exchanges a questioning glance with Leonard, who only shrugs and holds up his hands. “Don’t look at me, kid,” he says. “Ain’t my wedding!”

“I don’t know what I would write,” Jim says honestly as Deanna pluck a scrap of paper from her husband’s fingers.

She sets it down in front of him. “That’s the beauty of the thing,” Deanna says, winking conspiring at Jim. “You can write whatever you want.”

Jim looks at William and Leonard before huffing a sigh as he reaches for the pen. He thinks on what nonsense he’ll bestow upon whoever finds the slip of paper. The doves, which are secluded in their coops, don’t fly very far—perhaps forty kilometers or more before they return to him. “Got it,” he says aloud as he begins writing.

He feels the air around him shift as Leonard tries to steal peek. “Leonard!” Deanna admonishes, laughing all the while. “No spying!”

“Yeah, _Leonard_ ,” Jim teases, wrinkling his nose at him as he cups his hand over the paper. “No spying.”

Leonard rolls his eyes as he steals the tumbler back. “He’ll just tell me anyway.”

“Wrong,” he laughs. He folds the paper once he’s done and drops it into the bowl. “I’m keeping this a secret.”

“Oh, are you, darlin’?” Leonard drawls with a smirk. He leans back in his seat, relaxing like he did when he and Jim were together. That graceful, carefree way about him that Jim loved so much; how one look would make his heart beat faster.

And that drawl… _especially_ when he said darlin’. Jim had almost forgotten how much he missed it.

William and Deanna venture off to speak with other guests, leaving Jim and Leonard on their own. Leonard passes the scotch back, gesturing for him to finish it off.

He does, _gladly_. Being in the company of strangers has a habit of making him feel jittery like his skin’s too tight and he might throw up. “So a vacation in New Zealand, huh?” Jim comments as Leonard asks, “Do you want to dance?”

Jim stares at him in surprise. “Dance?” This is new; perhaps he bumped his head during his heart attack and Jocelyn hasn’t told him the entire story. Not that she would since their agreement is steadfastly in place. But _dancing_?

“Yeah,” Leonard replies, offering a hand. He’s smiling again, both dimples appearing on his cheeks and damn him, it still causes Jim’s heart to expand in his chest. “You know what they say.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“It takes two to tango,” Leonard deadpans and it takes every ounce of willpower for Jim not to roll his eyes because _really_?

Scoffing, Jim takes his hand. “Will you stop with the metaphors?”

“Probably not,” the other man admits as he helps Jim to his feet and leads him to the dance floor. They move through the crowd, Leonard surer than himself until he finds himself in the center of other couples swaying to the music.

Thank god, it’s not one of those sugary sweet songs from their younger years that regurgitates a nauseating theme of true love and happiness. The type of shit played in romantic comedies and that makes Jim want to gag. Loudly.

No, the DJ has enough sense to play a ditty crooned by a man whose voice is accompanied by a piano and some strings. The kind of song where Jim could rest his head on Leonard’s shoulder and close his eyes, pretending that everything was alright.

If he would only allow himself to.

Leonard, as it turns out, is an excellent dancer and leads Jim around the dance floor with ease. He must notice his partner’s widening eyes and laughs. “I was a friend’s escort to their cotillion,” he explains. “Big Southern thing; bigger than a girl’s sweet sixteen.”

Jim never knew this, he never asked. Then again they never danced together and thinking about it dredges up a bit of sadness he thought he tucked away. “Is that the one where they make you wear gloves?”

“That’d be the one,” Leonard chuckles. He glances down at Jim’s feet and shrugs. “You aren’t half bad, kid.”

“Youtube,” Jim deadpans. “You wouldn’t believe what tutorials you can find on there!”

Leonard seems unconvinced as he pulls Jim closer. His hand splays flat against the small of his back, warm and inviting like Jim remembers. “Really now?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. He stares into Leonard’s eyes, trying to see if the swirls of greens, golds, and browns have changed in the last ten years. The amber freckle near the edge of his right iris remains as does the smudge of umber on his left.

The other man leans in, brushing his cheek against Jim’s. “What else have you learned on Youtube?”

“How to use shaving cream to clean brass,” he answers as the scent of Leonard’s cologne, the scotch on his tongue, and the night air reaches his nostrils. “Making a flourless chocolate cake with only a frying pan and three ingredients.”

Leonard snorts in disbelief. “A frying pan?”

“You’d be surprised what you can do with a frying pan,” Jim babbles, pulling back just enough to find one of the other man’s trademark expressions—the dubious sort with a raised eyebrow.

God, his eyebrows. Always animated and revealing exactly how Leonard felt any topic or situation; amusement, disgust, annoyance, fondness. Forever changing his moods and still the same as they dance under twined fairy lights and the stars.

Leonard looks at Jim’s mouth, his own twitching. He knows that look—he saw it the first time Leonard kissed him, beneath the layer of fog rolling overhead while waves crashed against the pier. That look which made his toes curl and his cock harden. “You’ve become a frying pan connoisseur,” he muses.

“I need to pass the time somehow,” Jim whispers as his eyes trace the plump curve of Leonard’s bottom lip. What he really wants to say is _I missed you, I’ve missed you since you left, I’ve missed you for an entire decade_ , but all that’s coming out of his mouth is rambling nonsense about cookware.

And it’s not like Jim hasn’t gone to Wellington for the weekend, seeking out men or women under strobe-lit clubs or dive bars. He’s not picky and goes after whatever tickles his fancy that evening. Sure, it’s only for a night, but he gets what he needs before venturing back to the quiet of his house.

It’s nothing like _this_ ; nothing’s ever been like Leonard.

“I saw the coops outside your house,” Leonard mentions as they sway to the music. “Are you a farmer?”

He shakes his head. “I raise doves,” Jim says as he looks in the direction of the caged doves silently thankful that the nun had the foresight to cover them with blankets; Leonard follows. “Breed some of them, train them.” He turns, notices the centimeters between him and the other man.

So close he could kiss him.

Leonard notices too and, unlike Jim, does something about it. Dipping his head, he watches Jim’s reaction as he inches closer from beneath a fan of dark lashes. His tongue flicks out to wet his lips and Jim can’t even breathe until he can and Leonard is _kissing_ him.

He breathes out, parting his mouth for the wet brush of Leonard’s tongue, for his lips, his teeth, anything he wanted to give Jim.

He missed _this—_ the intimacy, the rush. Jim missed all of it so much he couldn’t fathom it until the moment Leonard deepened the kiss to explore his mouth further. God, he missed it so much!

Blood roars in Jim’s ears, drowning out the sounds of the wedding, the music, the people. He doesn’t know if they’re still swaying or standing in place.

However, he _does_ know they miss the bride and groom’s speech and he’s not even the slightest bit apologetic about it.

 

* * *

 

Sex with Leonard is how Jim remembers it; passionate and filled with reckless abandon.

They stumble into his hotel room, gasping into each other’s mouths as fingers go for buttons, belts, zippers, undoing them in the quickest way possible. Well, Jim tries to anyways; Leonard is sucking on the spot on his neck that makes his knees turn to jelly while his cock goes from interested to rock hard in seconds. He doesn’t even mind being slammed against the door, shutting it with the force of his body or that Leonard is manhandling him with such intensity, he wonders if this other man might have another heart attack. Because, really, he doesn’t want to be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

It doesn’t matter; Leonard’s hands find their way under Jim’s sweater and, _fuck_ , he’s missed being touched by him. He’s missed this man’s fingertips on his skin, raking up his stomach, rubbing his nipple to a hard point before going to its twin, their lips pressed together. Jim falls into it, like he’s always done, moaning and gasping and begging for more.

Always _more_ like it’s never enough for _him_ or Leonard who growls into the curve of his throat as he finds his way into the front of Jim’s trousers.

Memories of them being together come flooding back; every touch, every kiss, every mark—it’s all swirling in Jim’s head as Leonard’s hand wraps itself around his cock and begins _stroking_. He cries out, shuddering and desperate as fingers spread precum over his swollen head.

Surgeon’s hands, Jim decides as Leonard’s fingers tease his aching length, are the best. They migrate to stroke his balls, over the sensitive skin of his perineum, and back to his dick and _Christ_ , Jim thinks he might cum right then and there.

He pulls Leonard closer, grasping his silver-streaked hair with both hands and attacks him. He can’t describe it in any other way, save for the visceral need to be tasting him. Leonard grunts softly into Jim’s mouth, obliging his explorations with his tongue and nip of teeth against that bottom lip of his that ruins every ounce of Jim’s common sense.

Jim pushes Leonard’s suit jacket off his broad shoulders before undoing the buttons of his shirt with trembling fingers. He finds him underneath the layers of clothing and runs his hands over Leonard’s skin, only stopping when his sweater is pulled over his head and tossed onto the floor.

Their trousers are next to go, falling into a puddle next to their feet followed by their underwear. Jim looks Leonard over, noting not much has changed about him. His stomach may look a little softer—hell, so does his own—but it’s still _him_.

Except for the scar on his sternum, too pink and recent to Jim’s liking. He reaches out to touch it and traces over the jagged line with his fingertips, never allowing their skin to meet. The fear of hurting Leonard keeps Jim from doing so, so he studies the mark before noticing the other man cupping his cheek.

“Hey,” Leonard whispers. He lifts his gaze to his own, grinning when their eyes meet. It’s the one Jim remembers from long ago, when he would be in a mood and Leonard would just _know_. Then again, Leonard _did_ say Jim was like an open book, a funny statement to describe him when so many others complained of how closed off he was.

Lips brush against his cheek. “It’s okay,” Leonard assures, moving over Jim’s face. He kisses every freckle and scar he comes across. “C’mere” he whispers, pressing their mouths together.

Jim sinks into it with a sigh. Despite sounding incredibly hokey, kissing Leonard is like coming home after a long day. Their chests brush against one another as Jim folds into his chest, snaking his hands up the expanse of Leonard’s back as they stumble their way towards the bed.

They land upon the mattress, lavishing each other with hands and mouths. Leonard moves over him, his tongue tracing over Jim’s iliac furrow when he isn’t nipping a slow path towards his cock. He groans when Leonard pushes his legs up towards his chest, shutting his eyes as teeth sink into the conjuncture of his groin. “Please,” Jim pleads quietly.

Bones presses against his mouth, wanting to be spoken aloud. It’s what he always did when they were together; Jim never called him Leonard, having decided it was an old man’s name and they were so very young. Neither of them had silver streaks in their hair or wrinkles on their faces, not like they do now. But Bones is the name only Jim was allowed to use; it was his, theirs.

“One second,” Leonard murmurs into his pubic hair. He crawls up Jim’s body and presses a quick kiss to his lips before reaching over and grabbing a bag from the floor. Riffling around, he finds what he’s looking for—lube as it turns out. Leonard cups the back of Jim’s, bringing them together as he drops the bottle on the comforter. His fingers brush over Jim’s cheeks, rubbing circles in their hollows while Leonard groans in appreciation.

Their cocks rub against each other, wet and hard and wanting. Jim digs his hands into Leonard’s hips, urging them forward. He gasps at the friction, the feeling of another rutting with him. “ _Please_ ,” he whispers against Leonard’s mouth.

“I got you,” Leonard promises over the sound of him uncapping the bottle.

He knows what happens in those moments before the feeling of Leonard’s finger sinking inside of him. How he warms the lube by rubbing it around, how he pours too much because he wouldn’t forgive himself for hurting Jim, how he tugs on Jim’s bottom lip as his hand snakes down their bodies to find the tight pucker of his hole.

Then there’s the slick press of a finger, slowly working its way inside and Jim can’t _breathe_.

The sensation of being opened up isn’t something Jim isn’t used to; it’s how his body does it for Leonard. His barriers fall apart at the pleasant burn, taking every bit of Leonard into himself long before they make love. The first finger stretches him for the second and together they seek out Jim’s prostate, abusing the gland until he’s begging and lifting his hips off the bed.

All while Leonard’s hazel eyes watch him and cherry red lips pursed in concentration.

“Please,” Jim moans as Leonard removes his fingers and slicks himself up. He catches him in the circle of his legs, pressing them into the other man’s sides as his cock settles at his hole. Jim buries his hands in Leonard’s hair and throws his head back, groaning. “Leonard… _please_!”

Leonard pushes the breath from Jim’s lungs and sinks into him, going and going and going until he’s buried to the hilt. “I’ve got you,” he whispers, snapping his hips forward.

The angle strikes Jim’s prostate.

They fuck hard, digging into each other so neither one of them can escape. Fingernails, the sharp edge of teeth, the suction of mouths against skin—all of it adds to their pleasure. Leonard presses Jim’s wrists into the mattress and stares at him as his cock abuses his prostate over and over.

Sweat slickens their bodies, rolls down their faces, adds saltiness to their kisses; they’ve become primal in their lovemaking. As if all the years they’ve been apart is rushing back to them and paying retribution.

He’s missed _this_ ; Jim’s missed this so much.

He cums to Leonard’s mouth against his own, untouched and clenching hard around Leonard’s cock. His orgasm doesn’t teeter, waiting for the next thrust to land just right; it snaps and whites out his vision while his lover’s hips go staccato until Leonard erupts inside of him.

Jim holds him close, caressing his back as Leonard shakes through his release, whispering, “I know. I know.”

Because he does; he _really_ does.

 

* * *

 

He remembers their first fight—the one in Jim’s hospital room moments after he regained consciousness—and the last one, too.

The last one sticks out in his mind the most.

Probably because it was the most painful. It would be the last time he saw or spoke to Leonard, only mere days before he’d finally meet with two French doctors who promised him he could be reunited with his family.

Jim remembers the excitement thrumming through his body as he laid in bed with Leonard, shortly after fucking in front of the hotel room window. It overlooked Manukau Harbor and sent a thrill down his spine while Leonard bent him over the desk and _took_ him.

Looking back, Leonard seemed tense that day. Skittish, snippy, crankier than his usual wont and when he charged up to Jim, gnashing their mouths together in a brutal kiss, Jim hadn’t questioned it. He gave Leonard what he wanted because honestly, he wanted it too. Something deep inside of Jim needed that violent coupling.

Jim needed the bite of teeth, bruises lovingly pressed into his skin, pain radiating through his body. He needed it like he needed air.

He needed it in order to forget that Chris was dying; cancer in his brain was going to kill him no matter what the doctors proposed. That he was going to lose his family once and for all…

Unless what doctors Balthazar Edison and Jaylah Camus-Djebar told him was true, that through means he didn’t understand he could be reunited with his family and others who departed.

It started with Erik Estrada calling him in the dead of night. “Hello,” he said after Jim fumbled for the phone and croaked a sleepy greeting. “Is this Jim Kirk?”

“Yeah, who’s this?” he yawned.

“Is this a secure line?”

Jim was running his hand over his eyes when he blinked in confusion. “What?”

“This is Erik Estrada,” the man told him.

“Who?”

“Erik Estrada,” he repeated, sounding annoyed. “I’m calling on behalf of a third party and they’ve asked me to ask you a question.”

He made a face at the phone, fully aware that this person couldn’t see him. “Look, man, I don’t know who you are, but—”

“Would you like to see your family again?”

A question Jim had heard so many times and it still _hurt_. He clutched the phone, the plastic casing digging into his palm as rage pulsed through him. “Listen to me, asshole,” Jim snarled, “you and your third party can shove it up your…”

“Peter and David, right?” the man interrupted. “Those are your nephew’s names.”

His breath caught in his throat, burning a hole right down to his still aching heart. “Yes,” Jim whispers. “How did you—”

“I’m only going to be here for the next twenty-four hours, so if you want to see your family, you need to come to see me,” Erik told him. “In person,” he added. “I’m at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay. Just ask for me, okay?”

Jim couldn’t speak. He could only feel the heartache of hearing his nephew’s names spoken for the first time in years. Chris made sure the reports never mentioned their names—they were minors. Children, babies—that sort of information was confidential.

How did this person know? How?

Why did he know?

“Jim?”

“Yeah?” he replied.

Erik sighed. “It’s real.”

And it was real. He would learn that later.

Several years after the Sudden Departure, Dr. Zefram Cochrane had developed a device that could transport a person to where the departed went.

Jim couldn’t ask Cochrane himself because as luck would have it, Erik explained, he was no longer on this plane of existence. “How are you sure it worked then?”

“Faith,” Erik answered as he buttered a roll. They were in his hotel room overlooking the ocean. “Cochrane is fucking brilliant! If anyone could do it, it would be him.”

He raised a brow, perplexed. “Why you?”

“Why me what?”

“Why use you are the middleman?” Jim asked. “And how did they figure out you didn’t go with the rest of them?”

Erik set the roll down and frowned. “Five series regulars. Four go, one stays,” he grumbled. “Do you know what the odds of that are, kid?”

Jim pictured his parent’s empty house, his empty hometown as he wandered through it, searching for someone, anyone else. “One in a hundred twenty-nine thousand.”

“What happened was arbitrary,” the other man said dismissively. There was a hint of jealousy Jim recalls hearing in his tone as he slipped the thumb drive across the table. He wondered how anyone could be jealous of not departing but stayed silent. “It was purposeless and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything to deserve this…and neither did you.”

He wanted to refute that; after all, he lied to Leonard about where he was going because Leonard would never agree with this. Jim knew that and went anyways, motivated by curiosity and hope.

“Their contact information is on there,” Erik told him.

“What else is on here?” Jim asked.

Erik’s smile was blinding and filled with perfectly white teeth. “Watch,” he said. “And decide.”

In the end, he watched the videos stored on the thumb drive. Grainy confessionals of people who declared they were going to join their loved ones on the other side; where the departed went. Each of them held up a newspaper, declaring the date and a statement of how they were in their right mind. They said the people responsible—people they never named—weren’t accountable for whatever may happen.

Jim noticed two things: every single one of them appeared to be in varying states of genuine happiness and there was no trace of them after the date on the newspaper.

He knew this because he had looked; looked on the internet, in public records, in missing person’s reports. Anything and everything he could get his hands on, he did. Jim researched every single subject of the videos until he exhausted all resources and finally began to realize the opportunity a television star and a group of scientists had given him was _real_.

So he told Chris, who promised with wary skepticism not to say a word or judge until he, too, reviewed the stack of notebooks filled with Jim’s scribbles. “Well shit,” Chris said a few days later. “I think they’re telling the truth.”

“So do I,” Jim quietly agreed. They were in a place down the street from his apartment, having a late breakfast and coffee. “I can’t explain it, Chris. I just _feel_ it.”

His uncle nodded; it was the first time since his diagnosis that Jim had seen him look anything but ashen or traversing the Earth in a coma. Then again, finding out that you have terminal cancer tended to do that to people. “Are you going to go through with it?”

They both knew the answer, but Jim figured Chris had to ask it anyway. He felt a gaping wound where his family used to fill and no matter how happy Leonard made him, it was always there. It was his own black hole in the center of his chest, growing and waiting until it would be able to swallow him. Jumping off the bridge had been one attempt, but Jim fought it. Perhaps these scientists could give him the means to seek out his family wherever they went and finally have some closure.

At least, that’s how Jim wanted to think of it.

He couldn’t tell Leonard, of course, because Leonard was practical. Leonard saw the world for what it was and anything fantastical or nonsensical could go to hell. Telling him would be disastrous, it would be the end of them.

And it was—their relationship crashed and burned in a hotel room.

Jim had suggested they visit New Zealand during the two weeks of vacation Leonard got every year. Guilt ate at him as they planned their trip, as Leonard’s blinding smile flashed in his direction, as they had sex for the last time in an unfamiliar bed.

Then Jim told him the real reason why they came and, predictably, Leonard exploded.

“You can’t be happy because then you’d have no excuse, Jim!” he shouted as he threw on his clothes. “You won’t be able to be a victim anymore. You’ll have to be okay! And no one would feel sorry for you!”

Jim sat on the bed, naked save for the bedsheets covering his body and watched as Leonard began to pack his bag. “I don’t want people to feel sorry for me, Bones.”

“Well, then how long? How long until you move past it?” he demanded, holding a pair of socks in his hand and looking utterly beautiful.

“Move past what?”

Leonard huffed and threw his arms up in frustration. “That you lost your family!”

“I did not lose them!” Jim snarled, jumping off the bed and crowded into Leonard’s sphere. “My family _isn’t_ dead! They are gone, Bones! They’re just gone!”

And Leonard laughed in his face; one of those shrill, hysterical laughs that made Jim’s ears hurt because he knew. He knew the bomb in the center of their relationship—the one where he missed his family beyond all reason and he would never be whole, no matter how much Leonard tried. He tried _so fucking hard_ ; he did, but it would never be enough.

“It’s never going to be enough for you,” Leonard told him as he zipped up his bag and heaved it over his shoulder. “This. _Us_. It will never be enough.”

Jim sat on the bed, wanting to tell him no. Instead, he shook his head, feeling numb as he did so. It was strange to admit the truth, even if he didn’t want it.

Leonard set his keycard down on the table and walked to the door, never looking back as he opened it. “Then you should go be with them,” he said.

It slammed shut, the sound reverberating all around him then as it does now.

Jim’s eyes snap open as someone uses unnecessary force to close a door on the floor above and he becomes aware that he’s not in his bed or in his house and he’s _sharing a bed with another person_. Their arm’s limp across his belly as they snore next to him, blissfully unaware of the mild panic attack forming in Jim’s chest.

Listening to a voice in his head that sounds awful like Jocelyn, he inhales deeply and counts to five before exhaling and turning to see who’s using part of his shoulder as a chin rest. Jim starts when he’s greeted by Leonard’s sleeping face, still soft and lovely like he remembers.

Then he _remembers_.

Leonard on his doorstep.

Leonard sitting across from him as they share a glass of scotch under the stars.

Leonard smiling at him while they slow dance.

Leonard kissing him, full of promise and desire.

Leonard’s body against his and inside him and so fucking perfect he can’t breathe.

Leonard’s mouth on his as their tongues roll against each other, tasting sweat and the residual burn of scotch while the scent of sex fades from the room.

Leonard curling around him as Jim drifts off, making a happy sound and it’s the last thing he hears before sleep claims him.

Now here they are, tangled up in sheets and each other and all Jim can do is panic. He needs space, time to think, time to comprehend.

Jim slips himself from Leonard’s grasp by starting with his arm, lifting it from his stomach and resting it in the valley between their bodies. His shoulder requires more stealth and perhaps a prayer or two. He looks up at the ceiling and bites his lip as he inches the limb from underneath Leonard’s head. The other man’s stubble leaves a pleasant itch on his skin as Jim moves, filling him with regret before a sleepy grunt breaks the silence.

There’s a terrifying moment where Jim thinks he’s woken Leonard and will need to make excuses for why he’s leaving the bed. Excuses will lead to a fight like the one they had years before and it’s something Jim doesn’t care to repeat.

After all, it hurt enough the first time.

Leonard rolls away from him, onto his side and smacks his lips together as he settles into the new position. Islands of half-moon indentations crawl up his spine where Jim dug his fingernails in where there aren’t freckles.

Not that Jim can actually see those in the dark, but he knows they’re there.

With the opportunity opened to him, Jim slips out of bed and begins dressing as quietly as possible. He does well for himself even if his underwear is missing and he has to go commando, but he’s been through worse.

He passes by a desk where a pad of paper with the hotel’s logo and a pen sit, untouched. Turning back to Leonard, Jim bites his lip and worries it with his teeth because he doesn’t want to leave him for good, not like before.

Because now Leonard knows he isn’t dead and soon, others back in San Francisco will too. Everything is changing and has been since Leonard arrived in town with an old picture of Jim. Since he found the nun and showed it to her, asking if she had ever seen him before.

The nun with her secretive smile and uncanny ability to see through Jim’s bullshit, always lingering in the background and observing.

She must have known.

Jim scribbles a hasty note for Leonard to find, then leaves the hotel room in search of his bicycle. It’s unsurprisingly where he left it—leaning against a lamp post, unmolested—and sets off for the church.

The ride over is as uneventful as a bicycle ride at five in the morning can be. He doesn’t encounter a single soul, something that eerily reminds him of the Sudden Departure.

Except he isn’t scared, not anymore.

He comes down the dirt road leading to the church as a man climbs down a ladder propped up against what Jim suspects might be the nunnery or wherever nuns live. At first glance, the stranger wears an unseasonable leather jacket until Jim draws closer to find a motorcycle parked nearby.

The man skips the last three steps and hops down, kicking up dust as he grabs the ladder and tilts it on its side before putting it back against the building. He glances up at the window he climbed out of and crosses himself, then he’s going to his motorcycle where he notices Jim watching him. He doesn’t even start at his unexpected observer, nor does he try to make excuses. “Good evening,” the man says with an English accent.

“Good morning,” Jim replies.

“So it is,” the man tells him as he starts up his motorcycle and leaves, the engine’s roar fading until it’s only crickets.

Jim hops off his bike, rushing to the front door where he bangs on it with his fist because he knows that nun is awake. In fact, he bets his life that the man he just saw was her gentleman caller and she isn’t as holy as she appears.

He bangs on it again, harder and louder until his knuckles ache and someone answers the door.

“Steve,” the nun says, surprised. She stands in front of him wearing her cross and a nightgown.

“You planned this,” Jim snaps, breathless.

She raises a brow while she folds her arms over her chest. “Planned what?”

“You knew that Leonard and I knew each other from before and sent him to my house!”

One side of her mouth pinches into a smirk. “I don’t know where you live, Steve,” the nun replies. “So if I wanted to play matchmaker, I wouldn’t be able to.”

“Please! It’s not _that_ hard to track me down,” he yells, frustrated. “An American man who breeds doves? Seriously?”

The nun doesn’t give anything away. “Perhaps it’s divine intervention. Did you ever think of that?”

“Divine intervention?” Jim snorts, rolling his eyes. “Are you telling me that the cosmos decided that I needed to get laid, so they sent my ex-boyfriend to New Zealand?”

“Love works in mysterious ways,” the nun tells him, smiling.

Jim glares at her. “Love is a fairy tale we tell ourselves so our lives don’t seem as bad,” he snarls. “It’s great that you and everyone else believes that some unknown force will deliver the love our of lives, but I’m not buying that bullshit!”

“I’m not trying to force anything upon you,” she responds, unfazed by his tone. “Everyone deserves to be happy, Steve. Even you.”

He scoffs in disbelief because he doesn’t think happiness is in the cards for him. Unless if Leonard… _never mind_. “Who was that man?” Jim demands.

The nun’s eyes flicker. “What man?”

“The man I just saw leaving.”

“You mean Father Philip,” she says with a smile. “He’s the only man permitted in the convent.”

Jim wrinkles his nose, smirking. “Does Father Philip ride a motorcycle?”

“No.”

His smirk grows. “Well,” Jim deadpans, pointing towards a window with the light still on. “This man did and he was climbing down a ladder from that room right up there.”

She follows his finger and hums. “Well that’s strange,” the nun comments.

“Is that your room?” Jim asks even though he knows the answer.

The nun shrugs. “It might be,” she answers. “But I certainly haven’t seen any men on ladders.”

“You had _sex_ with him!” he growls, pissed at the fact that _nothing_ seems to faze this woman.

“No, I didn’t.”

He scratches his head as he looks away to control his temper; Jim feels the urge to shout down this entire church even if it means he’ll probably be committed and banned from ever setting foot in New Zealand. “You did.”

“Did not.”

He turns back. “Then swear to God.”

“All right,” she says, clearly humoring. Closing her eyes, she tilts her head up towards the sky. “I swear to God.”

Jim makes an annoyed sound. “You’re a fucking liar!”

She just smiles and shuts the door in his face.

 

* * *

 

The ride back to his house is far more eventful than the one to the church, starting with the pothole Jim misses because he’s so fucking angry that he doesn’t realize he’s hit it until he’s flying over his handlebars and gets the wind knocked out of him when he lands on the ground.

Jim lies there for a moment, stunned until pain blooms all over his body and he wheezes. Taking stock of his injuries, he’s pretty sure the wet feeling rolling down his temple is a cut and he’s going to be one giant bruise in a few hours. At least nothing’s broken.

On second thought, scratch that. He turns to find the mangled front wheel of his bike and becomes pretty sure that he’ll need a new one.

“Fuck,” he hisses between his teeth, forcing himself to roll onto his side. His palms ache and sting, reminding him of the time he was learning to ride his bike outside of his parent’s house.

He fell so much the first time because Jim had refused training wheels. He wanted to be like Sam, who was eight years old and rode around the front yard like a pro. Every time he tipped over onto the dirt, which was plenty, Jim picked himself back up while his dad chuckled, telling him that he was the single most stubborn five-year-old he’d ever seen.

So at forty-seven, Jim picks himself up to collect the pieces of his bike and walks his ass home. It’s light out when he trudges down the driveway and finds Leonard with his rented truck, watching as the other man gets out and slams the door behind him.

“Do you want to know how I found you, Jim? You want the truth?” Leonard asks, charging up to him. He’s not wearing the suit they left on the floor. “When Chris told me you were gone; I didn’t believe him or I couldn’t. I just had this feeling that you were still alive. That I would see you again. And then Chris died and you weren’t even at the funeral!”

He waves his hand in the air, gesturing his emotions as Jim looks on. “That should have convinced me, but I couldn’t believe the last time we saw each other or spoke was in that _fucking_ hotel room!” Leonard comes closer. “I was _so_ sure you were still alive even though everyone else in the world thought differently…I _had_ to do something about it.” Tears fall down his cheeks. “So I decided to look for you; I was gonna start right where I lost you. Every year I take a two-week vacation. Every year I come to _fucking_ New Zealand and show your picture to everyone I meet! And I _fucking_ hate the humidity, you know? I hate the way the toilet water flows and the lack of iced _fucking_ tea and the backward weather!” He balls his fists and kicks the dirt. “And why is _everyone_ so goddamn happy?”

Jim can only stare, jaw slack and mouth agape.

“But I couldn’t stop!” Leonard yells. “Every year I would say to myself I can’t do this, but I did! Every fucking year for ten years, Jim! Because I love you so damn much!” He points towards the road, the one that leads to the church and the town. “And a couple days ago, that nun…I knew when I saw her face. You were here.”

Sighing, he takes a step closer. “And when I saw you,” Leonard whispers. “I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t know what to say or where I start, so I started at the beginning. When we first met because I thought I could erase everything between us and start over. So we could have another chance.”

Jim walks up to him, dumping the broken bike on the side of the driveway and braces himself for Leonard’s onslaught of his current appearance. “I wasn’t gone,” he says as the other man rushes to him and takes stock of his injuries. Leonard’s hands cup his face.

“What the hell happened to you?” he barks, sounding concerned. Sounding like a doctor; it makes a chuckle bubble up inside of Jim’s stomach. “Jesus Christ, Jim! You’re bleeding!”

He allows Leonard to dab at his head with the end of his sleeve. “I went…” he whispers. “I saw them; my family.” Jim looks into his eyes and nods. “I saw them and where they went. Where everyone went. It took a long time because…most of the population was here, but I found them.” He leans into Leonard’s touch. “They renamed Riverside to Miracle because they only lost one person. There’s a boat that takes people there every few months—that’s how I got there—and it was so much bigger than I remember. All of these men and women and children…they were so lucky. They had each other in this strange world, this world full of orphans. Even my family, they moved on and they were okay. And I was a ghost.”

Jim presses their foreheads together and chokes out a sob. “I was a ghost who had no place there and I missed you. I missed you so much that I found Dr. Cochrane and he built the machine so I could come back to you.”

He doesn’t need to say anymore because Leonard knows. Jim knows when Leonard kisses him, both of them sobbing and laughing into each other’s mouths.

He knows when he drags Leonard into his house, leaving a trail of clothes from the front door to his bedroom where they fall onto the unmade bed and make love for hours. Jim’s sore, sure, but he _needs_ to have Leonard inside of him.

He needs it as much as he needs air; they both do.

They’re cuddled together under the comforter where Jim is tracing over the lines etched into Leonard’s palm when the sound of wings and cooing waft in from outside.

“What’s that?” Leonard asks. He presses a kiss to a freckle on Jim’s shoulder, where his head laid in the early hours of the morning.

Jim tilts his head, listening, and chuckles. “The doves,” he answers turning to his lover. “They found their way back home.”

“Like you did?” Leonard murmurs as he creeps closer, brushing a lock of hair off Jim’s forehead.

He nods, smiling. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Like I did.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was quite the endeavor that nearly ended with me scraping the entire thing because the original story got too complex, but thanks to Bre, Heather, Mel, Matt, Mo, Leah, and Tresa's cheerleading, I was able to salvage this AU. Seriously, these guys are squad goals and I have no idea what I'd do without them. Quotes borrowed from _The Leftovers_ and _Star Trek_ , etc., etc.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


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